


Twenty-Three

by arabybizarre, clonesanity, Cophinaphile, HaughtBreaker, jaybear1701, kind-of-always-late (intransient_adventure), LadyZephyr, mveloc, OBFrankenfics, thecirclesquare, trylonandperisphere, tumblweed, twig_height



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-01
Updated: 2015-08-20
Packaged: 2018-04-12 09:25:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 21
Words: 40,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4474010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arabybizarre/pseuds/arabybizarre, https://archiveofourown.org/users/clonesanity/pseuds/clonesanity, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cophinaphile/pseuds/Cophinaphile, https://archiveofourown.org/users/HaughtBreaker/pseuds/HaughtBreaker, https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaybear1701/pseuds/jaybear1701, https://archiveofourown.org/users/intransient_adventure/pseuds/kind-of-always-late, https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyZephyr/pseuds/LadyZephyr, https://archiveofourown.org/users/mveloc/pseuds/mveloc, https://archiveofourown.org/users/OBFrankenfics/pseuds/OBFrankenfics, https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecirclesquare/pseuds/thecirclesquare, https://archiveofourown.org/users/trylonandperisphere/pseuds/trylonandperisphere, https://archiveofourown.org/users/tumblweed/pseuds/tumblweed, https://archiveofourown.org/users/twig_height/pseuds/twig_height
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A compilation of one-shots inspired by the tumblr post "23 Emotions People Feel, But Can't Explain."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Opia (Cophinaphile)

**Author's Note:**

> During a trip home to meet her parents, Cosima takes Delphine to her favorite place as a child-an amusement park that's long since been abandoned.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Opia: The ambiguous intensity of Looking someone in the eye, which can feel simultaneously invasive and vulnerable.

 THIS ORGANISM AND ANY DERIVATIVE GENETIC MATERIAL IS RESTRICTED INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY.

The crushing weight of the words on the screen in front of them displaced any elation they had felt at finally breaking the cypher, at unlocking the language of Cosima’s DNA, and by extension that of her clones as well.  They’d gone searching for a needle in a haystack, and what they had found was a noose.

The irony of the discovery paralyzed their minds as their bodies sank back against the couch. Each in her own way, the sisters had engaged in acts of self-direction, exercising agency to win the right for freedom. Even the blonde had finally chosen a side, had chosen her heart, had chosen Cosima.  But as the letters became words that became phrases that had meaning, and as the meaning of those words together became clear, the futility of their plans had also become clear.

Delphine was in shock. Cosima. Her sisters. Property. Things. Not people.  Possessed. Not self-possessed.  Eye eyes cast down, her mouth closed tightly against the despair she felt, she could not look at Cosima; she was uncertain if she even had the right.  She wanted desperately for Cosima to forgive her, to see her as an ally, to love her if she could, and now she sat next to the woman she had inexplicably fallen for at possibly the most upsetting moment of her entire life.  She could not imagine how Cosima must feel; how much she might hate her at this moment; how much it would hurt when Cosima sent away again, as she would have every right to do.   And then she heard the hitch in Cosima’s breath, the quavering of a voice attempting to produce language.  

Cosima sounded so raw that Delphine allowed her gaze to shift in the direction of the smaller woman next to her; she prepared herself to receive whatever Cosima needed to purge. It was the least she could do for having been so implicated.

“I’m sick, Delphine.” Cosima practically whimpered. She too turned, allowing her eyes, which were more desperately sad than anything Delphine had ever seen, to meet the blonde’s.

Delphine, devastated in her own right by the implications of the simple phrase, accepted the grief being offered her, made room for it, understood that Cosima meant it as a gift not as an imposition, a gift of whose receipt she struggled to feel worthy.  

And then, perhaps because their intimacy had always been born of complexity, it seemed the most natural thing to take Cosima in her arms, to hold the frightened woman close to her breast and then, finally, to kiss her.

To the blonde’s relief and surprise, Cosima allowed this, welcomed it in fact.  The brunette moved closer to deepen their kiss, and then whispered into the shell of Delphine’s ear, “Take me to bed.”

The blonde did not hesitate in her response.

Cosima insisted that Delphine use her hands. She insisted that they lay with the length of their bodies’ touching. She insisted that she be allowed to feel Delphine move against her, inside her, while at the same time being able to see the desire in her lover’s eyes. She insisted, after her own climax, that Delphine not worry over her; she insisted that she be allowed to taste the arousal she inspired in the blonde; she insisted that Delphine say her name, and she insisted, after Delphine’s climax, that she be allowed to control her own biology.

Delphine, knowing full well that the vials needed to go to DYAD looked Cosima in the eye and lied. Then she took the smaller woman in her arms again and kissed her, hoping that someday Cosima might truly forgive her, might choose her, might even love her.  


	2. Opia (thecirclesquare)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Opia: The ambiguous intensity of looking someone in the eye, which can feel simultaneously invasive and vulnerable.

“That’s a very interesting story, Cosima, but what you are saying is purely anecdotal—it proves nothing.”

He shouted this over the music as he sipped on his Stella Artois. I didn’t know who he was, a friend of Felix’s, I suppose. I shall call him Hipster Tim.

We sat together on Felix’s couch, surrounded on all sides by the bodies of strangers. He was a stranger, too. Perhaps that’s why I had brought up the ‘incident,’ as I like to call it. Perhaps that’s why I mentioned this one thing to him that I hadn’t mentioned to anyone else—not Sarah, not Felix, not Alison.

He sucked the beer from his caterpillar mustache and smiled.

He went on.

“It could have been a hallucination, most likely caused by the lack of oxygen supplied to your brain.”

“You’re assuming that I experienced oxygen deprivation,” I said, “but since I was alone in the room, there is no way of knowing if I was oxygen deprived or not—”

“My point exactly!” he interjected, his finger in the air. “You were alone, half asleep as you said. It could have been any number of things, including an extremely vivid dream. Have you ever heard of sleep paralysis?”

Sarah perked up from the armchair.

“Oi! Is that when you’re sleeping?” she called out. “And like, you can’t open your eyes and shite?”

“Yes, exactly,” he said, turning toward her. “Many people feel strong anxiety or see intense hallucinations. Others are aware of their surroundings but are unable to move…”

“That’s right!” Sarah said. “Can’t move your arms or legs! It’s bloody awful! And sometimes, I get this real nasty suffocation feeling in my chest, like someone’s sitting on me.”

She pounded on her own chest. Then she waved Felix over.

“Hey, Fe! You’ve got to hear this. This guy says we aren’t crazy with the night terrors and suffocation bit.”

“Christ!” Felix chimed in. “What a relief! I thought I’d tripped on acid one too many times and done permanent damage.”

Felix sat down on the arm of the couch just as I stood up.

“Will you excuse me for a moment?” I said. “Nature calls.”

I joined the long line for the bathroom, keeping my arms crossed and my head down, scrolling my thumb endlessly over my Facebook dash without actually seeing any of the headlines.

I couldn’t help but overhear the words  _supernatural_ ,  _vampire_ , and  _hysteria_ drift over from Hipster Tim’s mouth. I couldn’t help but kick myself for bring up such a personal moment with a complete (and completely pretentious) stranger.

Distracted, I found myself googling sleep paralysis. I groaned in annoyance as I read over the description.

“This is so clearly not what I was talking about,” I whispered to myself. “Oxygen deprivation, my ass—”

Before I could finish my string of expletives, the bathroom door swung open, a woman stepped out through the beaded curtain, and I was instantly caught up in the gaze of a stranger; her eyes gentle like an old friend’s; her irises brown and unremarkable save for their warmth; her lashes long and sweeping.

She reached for her own heart. And so did I.

We stood, face to face, eye to eye, mouths open like our expressions—intense, vulnerable, intimate—not like strangers.

The illusion of intimacy was so compelling that for a moment—a mere heartbeat or two—I was convinced that I knew her, that I had seen her before, that I had anticipated the very way in which she tilted her head to the side and smiled.

“Excuse me,” I said.

“Perdón.”

The beads shook around her as she stepped aside. As I passed, our eyes met once more.

I can only describe the feeling as pure excitement, neither good nor bad, neither positive or negative.

No, this was primordial excitement, hardwired into the brain, a primitive recognition that was unsure whether the eyes gazing back at it were the eyes of a potential predator or the eyes of a potential mate.

Either way, the adrenalin did its work quickly and quietly, and by the time I had closed the bathroom door, my heart was pounding.

“What the fuck?” I whispered to myself.

I almost reached for the door. I almost pulled it open. I almost forgot why I had come to the bathroom in the first place.

I was overcome with fear; fear that I would never see that woman again, that she would walk out the door and I’d never know her name.

Yes, I almost pulled open the door, but then thought better of it.

“Pull yourself together,” I said into the mirror. “Act natural.”

And so, naturally, I finished what I had come for. Naturally, I washed my hands. Naturally, I checked my eyeliner and adjusted my dress so that the sleeve fell from my shoulder— _naturally_.

I took a deep breath. I pulled open the door. I walked out, nonchalantly. I glanced around the room, casually. I spotted her, the stranger across the room, standing by the window with a cigarette in her hand.

Our eyes met again, momentarily. I made my way toward her, thoughtlessly. She smiled, turning toward the window. She leaned over. She puffed out.

I shook like a leaf, predictably.

But when our eyes met again, her gaze pulled me in, until I found myself standing next to her, unsure of what to say. I bit my lip. She exhaled, turning toward the window without taking her eyes off of me.

“I don’t think it was sleep paralysis,” she said over the music.

“What?” I said, leaning closer.

She leaned in. She spoke louder.

“Before, when you were describing your experience—I don’t think it was sleep paralysis.”

“Oh! Me neither! But, like, who knows, right? The human experience is a complex one. There are more questions than answers, and all that jazz. I didn’t realize you were listening. ”

“I’m sorry. I was standing right behind the couch and I couldn’t help but overhear. It’s a subject that interests me.”

“Really?”

“Yes,” she said, tapping her cigarette on the window sill. “Your friend is completely wrong. Near death experiences most certainly do exist. They are widely reported throughout the world…though it is unclear if the experience is the byproduct of a dying mind or…or…that one’s consciousness can, in fact, leave the body for short periods of time, as has been reported in other phenomena, including remote viewing and astral projection. To dismiss them so easily is just…arrogance.”

I was both stunned and swooned by her words.

“Wow, that is quite an interest you have.”

“Yes, you might call it a passion. What about you?”

“Me?”

“Yeah, how do you feel about your experience? Do you believe it was supernatural in nature?”

“Well, to be honest, I hadn’t given much thought about it until it happened to me. I just assumed people were buying into the mass hysteria created by the media, or that they were trying to give their lives—their deaths—more meaning. I thought people were trying to make themselves feel special by claiming these things. I mean, astral projection—who wouldn’t want to be in more than one place at a time?”

“If only,” she said, nodding her head and stubbing out her cigarette. “And are you okay now? Your health?”

“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “Well, mostly.”

She glanced around, looking for a place to put the cigarette butt. I picked up an empty red cup. I reached it toward her, and she dropped the little butt in, glancing up at me before she tucked her hands into the pocket of her jeans.

“That’s good to hear,” she said. “After all, we’ve only just met.”

The little blonde hairs on her forearms stood up and shivered in the breeze.

“You’re cold,” I said, but I didn’t reach for the window. Somehow, I knew…

“Yes,” she said, “but I like the breeze. The fresh air makes me—”

“—feel more alive,” I said quickly, surprising even myself.

“…feel…alive,” she said slowly.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to—”

“No, it’s fine. It’s fine.”

She reached for my arm. It was a small gesture—small and intimate. Her fingers barely brushed my skin before she realized what she was doing and pulled her own hand away, only to tuck it back into her pocket.

Her eyes narrowed for a moment, as if confused, as if contemplative.

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s nothing,” she said. “It’s silly.”

“What?”

“It’s just…I just had a moment’s déjà vu.”

She shook her head, and her curls bounced lightly in the fading sunlight.

Our eyes met again. The light of the sunset filtered in through the open window, landing warmly across her cheeks, lighting up her skin in pink and gold. I was struck by how very alive she seemed in that moment—as if she were the most alive person I had ever met.

“Yeah,” I said. “I think I’m feeling something like that, too.”

Her eyes roamed over my face in tiny, delicate movements. Her cheeks rose with her smile. Her wrinkles deepened around her mouth, revealing fragile lines that criss-crossed her complexion, lines that you wouldn’t notice in any other lighting, lines that hinted at many hidden things, many secrets, many vulnerabilities.

And yet, here they were, all on the surface, if only for an instant. I felt suddenly embarrassed for her. I felt as though I was seeing something I shouldn’t, that I should try hard to pretend it wasn’t there.

“But maybe it’s just wishful thinking, who knows?” I said. “Like reincarnation, for example.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I can see how it’s appealing to think that we’ll never die. Or that we will see our loved ones again in another life.”

“And our lovers,” she added.

Our eyes met again.

 _You make love with your eyes open_ , I thought.

And I felt her eyes on me in the dark—on my body, on my back, on my bare thighs—though, in reality, they had not moved from my face.

“Right,” I said, “And our lovers.”

“Perhaps that is why we feel a certain familiarity when we meet someone new, an intimacy that can’t be substantiated by present experience alone.”

 _And your orgasm…_ I thought.  _I know about that, too._

I saw a fresh wave of goosebumps rise up over her flesh. She sighed and shifted her weight.

_I know about the sounds of your throat. I know about the stretch of your limbs. I know about the smell of your arousal._

I shook my head in an attempt to shake these distracting thoughts away.

“Perhaps,” I said. “Or, it could be another trick of the mind. You know, I read once, that you could make yourself fall in love with anyone you want—even a stranger—within only a few hours.”

She tilted her head to the side. A golden curl fell across her forehead.

“And how would you do that?” she said, her posture soft, her voice even softer.

“There is a list of questions, personal questions that you ask each other.”

I blushed as my fingers burned to brush the curl from her face.

“Well, that sounds like a every other date.”

“No,” I said, crossing my arms. “These are questions about family, best friends, biggest fears and failures, dreams and ambitions. This isn’t small talk bullshit. This is like, deep shit. Like intimate shit.”

“Okay,” she said. “I’m listening.”

She brushed the hair behind her ear and crossed her own arms, leaning toward me.

“Well, that’s the thing,” I said. “Each partner takes turns asking the questions while the other listens intently. It has to be in a quiet place, without many distractions, and the most important part…”

I paused for emphasis. Her gaze landed on my lips.

“The most important part is…”

“Uh-huh…”

“…is that you have to look into this stranger’s eyes while they answer, like deeply into their eyes.”

“Of course,” she said.

She looked up. Our eyes met.

I know you…eyes open in the dark, teeth gritted, lips curled…I know you.

She licked her lips, but she didn’t look away.

“It’s a trust exercise,” she said softly. “A willingness to be vulnerable, non?”

“Yeah, something like that,” I said. “But then the question is…what inspires those feelings of love? Is it the intimate conversation? Or can it be accomplished by the gaze alone?”

“Good question,” she said, touching her own lips with the tip of her finger. “A very good question.”

“I mean, we could try it…as an experiment.”

Her eyes went wide, just the slightest, and she blinked several times quickly. And when she smiled, a little chuckle escaped her lips.

I shrugged my shoulders and looked away, suddenly hot. I rubbed at my neck and laughed, playing it off as a joke.

She reached for my hand. Her fingers were icy and trembling, but her smile was warm.

“Why don’t we go somewhere quiet, ehm, ehm…” she stuttered. “Ehm, what’s your name?”

“Oh, God! I’m so sorry. I’m Cosima! And you?”

“Delphine,” she said. “Enchantée.”

I stared at her lips as she spoke, certain that I would never be able to accurately reproduce the sound, but equally certain that I could spend my life trying.

“Enchantée.”


	3. Monachopsis (otp324B21)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Monachopsis: The subtle but persistent feeling of being out of place.

The music was pulsing an energetic beat, bass so loud it could direct the heartbeats of everyone in the building. Such an effect seemed to be in place as the crowd of people moved to the music. In the center of the mass, a small circle had formed, leaving space for the body that seemed to flow at ease, arms moving to the rhythm of the music as easy as if she were born to it, glowing neon bracelets stacked on each wrist, leaving trails of color in the pulsing light and darkness. She was at home here, surrounded by the people that loved the music just as much as she did, who moved like she did, who lived like she did.

Elevated above the crowd, the DJ toyed with the nobs and switches, lights shining on the table lighting him up like a false idol. DJ Drizzy, or Drippy or whatever the name was of this new music god, had one half of his headphones held up to one ear as he flipped a switch and the music morphed into a faster beat, the crowd suddenly cheering and moving to meet the beat, the smile across Cosima’s face widening.

Sipping from her glass of merlot, Delphine sat on a bar stool, watching her move, like flowing water, soft and fluid. She was captivated by the beauty of it, and yet there was a part of this that struck home. Cosima was so comfortable here, and Delphine… well she wasn’t here for the music… or the dancing. In every relationship there were compromises, and she loved watching the brunette dance so…

They’d been there a couple times, Delphine always finding a corner to sit in to just let her voyeuristic side free, watching as her lover moved, wild and carefree. Some people would be overly cautious, knowing that a woman as beautiful as Cosima would catch the eye of many people, but she’d watched more than once as the brunette ignored anyone’s attempts to dance with her, not out of callousness, but in the simple fact that the woman was lost in the music. She was just unaware of any attention directed her way, only opening her eyes every now and then to find Delphine and throw a smile her way.

Suddenly, a tiny form bumped into Delphine, all laughs and the thinnest blue irises surrounding pupils dilated as large as saucers. “Whoops… sorry lady.” The girl commented, smoothing down her brightly colored dress that covered rainbow leggings before leaning over the bar, yelling an order at the bartender. She waited by the bar, her hips and head moving along with the beat, predicting each bass beat and each treble high, her eyes raking over Delphine with a disbelieving look. “Nice blouse. Get lost on the way to the wine tasting?” The girl laughed, her fingertips sliding along the length of the bar, always moving, always touching.

It wasn’t the first look she’d gotten in her direction, a feeling of nonacceptance that she wasn’t used to. Delphine looked down at her clothes, the adult version of a white tank top tucked into the sleek black slacks crossed at the knees, her calf-high leather boots tapping the air to keep her patience. She watched as the girl accepted the pink colored drink and downed half of it thirstily. “You should not drink alcohol when under the effects of MDMA. The chances of falling victim to alcohol poisoning are far greater due to your level of thirst while the effects of both are drastically increased.”

The girl almost choked halfway through drinking the rest, laughing as she set the glass down. “I can totes handle it, thanks mom. Isn’t there a book club you’re late for?”

Delphine sighed. There were always mom comments thrown her way since she refused to change her style to appease a bunch of kids in their early 20s.

“You know she’s right.”

The voice was like a soothing wave and Delphine turned to find Cosima, a feisty set to her shoulders, obviously ready to fight. She didn’t feel the need to comment, instead she signaled the bartender for a water, feeling the fingertips that find her knee, circling the area before the contact increased into the flat of her palm. Looking back to Cosima, she noticed the brunette wasn’t even aware she was doing it.

“You should really be drinking water to chill out, like 20 oz an hour or so.”

The girl rolled her eyes. “Wow, I didn’t know I walked into some drug special. Drugs are bad, mmmkay?” She mocked before turning and disappearing into the crowd.

Cosima just shrugged, reaching over Delphine for the water. “Can’t win em all.” She commented as she took a long sip.

Delphine couldn’t stop the smile from appearing on her face as the brunette’s body pressed against her side, flushed skin beaded with sweat. As Cosima set the water down, Delphine reached up to turn the woman’s face to her, the dark hazel eyes she loved so much now black voids. “How are you feeling?” She runs her fingertip across the damp lips, swearing she heard a soft groan over the loud music.

With a laugh, Cosima moved closer, brushing her nose against Delphine’s. “Mmm, it’s starting to fade but still right as rain.” Her hands moved up the blonde’s biceps, tracing the slight definition of well-toned muscles. “I’ve got the sexiest woman in here keeping me out of trouble.” Her smiling lips brushed against Delphine’s in the softest of kisses, the tip of her tongue teasing the blonde’s lips and tasting the tart bite of the wine.

“Someone has to.” Delphine swallowed, her body reacting to the close proximity of the brunette as lips brushed the rim of her ear, teeth gently biting the soft skin of her lobe. Normally Cosima was a little less brazen in public, usually satisfied with holding hands or quick pecks on the lips, but tonight was not the normal type of night, the woman fueled by chemicals and hormones.

“You know… you could always join me.”

Cosima’s voice was a bare whisper, but even with the loud beat of the music, Delphine heard it deep inside her, her own hands resting on the swaying hips that didn’t stop moving. Delphine smirked. “I think someone needs to be the designated babysitter.”

Biting the corner of her own lip as she leaned back, Cosima removed the tiny tin from her bra, unscrewing the cover and removing two pills, offering the cerulean tablet to the blonde on the tip of her finger, stamped with a tiny dolphin. “If you take it now, we can catch a cab and be home before it even hits.” Her eyes caught Delphine’s, a challenging look in the gaze. “I know you’re curious.” Her voice dropped to a low timber. “You’ll totally love it.”

Contrary to what Cosima was insinuating, Delphine had never desired to take recreational drugs, even when she was a teen and all her classmates in boarding school were doing it, but there was something about the expression on her lover’s face, the explicit need and desire there. Against years of medical training advising her against it, she took the fingertip into her mouth, her tongue taking the bitter pill from the digit before pulling back, washing it down with a sip of wine.

Cosima grinned, taking the second pill herself with a sip of water. She couldn’t resist pulling Delphine to her for a kiss, her arm wrapping around the blonde’s neck to deepen the heated exchange. Finally, she pulled away, slipping her hand into Delphine’s as she licked her own lips. “Come on, let’s get out of here. I think I’m getting too old for this place.”


	4. Énouement (LadyZephyr)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Énouement: The bittersweetness of having arrived in the future, seeing how things turn out, but not being able to tell your past self.

Delphine observed herself carefully in the large mirror, she adjusts her hair, toying with the curls trying to catch her unsteady breath.

“You almost ready?” Cosima’s voice called from the bathroom door.

“Yes I think so.” Delphine gives herself a last once over, hair curly again and loose, white sundress covering her body, and ending in lace for a few inches below her knees.

“You’re beautiful. And we have to get going, you know, they give us an appointment time and we’re supposed to stick to it” Cosima grinned fiendishly, catching her hand and pulling her in.

She cannot stop herself from grinning back just as delightedly, “Don’t you know it’s bad luck to see the bride before the wedding.”

“Which bride?” Cosima cocked her head, she’s left her dreads half-down by Delphine’s request, clad in nothing but a red sundress. Her hands, usually decked with various rings, are completely bare. Though, Delphine smiled shyly at the thought, not for long.

She’d never imagined a wedding. Never played bride or imagined what her dress would look like, or fantasized about an imaginary husband. No, her life had been boarding school and science, obsession and academia. Isolation, even, until Cosima.  What would her younger self think of her now? Not only about to get married, but to a woman. An incredible, stubborn, intelligent woman.

She’d thought this would never happen, too complex, too mixed up, too rocky. That Cosima would die. Or that she would die, Delphine’s hand subconsciously goes to cover the scar on her right side. That Cosima did not love her back, or love her enough, or would not love her after what she had to do.  They’d both made mistakes, both fumbled around blindly trying to do what they thought was right, or to comfort themselves. Delphine with a bottle. Cosima with…another blonde.

“You ready, my love?” Cosima asked gently, letting her hand come up to rest over Delphine’s.

“Oui.” Delphine responded, tears brimming in her eyes, threatening to pour down her cheeks.

“Are you crying already?” Cosima teased her, pulling her in for a quick kiss on the cheek, “You’re supposed to cry during the vows. Not in the bathroom at City Hall.”  Marriage had been more important to either of them than a big wedding, with neither of them being particularly close to their biological families, there hadn’t been much of a reason to wait. They’d known each other less than a year, but she had never been more sure about anything. She wanted to marry Cosima, to be her wife.

“I know.” Delphine murmured back, but she cannot help it. She never thought this could happen, even six months ago that she’d be lucky enough, blessed enough even, to get to hold Cosima again - never mind marry her.  It was all so fortunate. That the shot hadn’t destroyed much of her liver. That she’d been rushed to hospital. That Cosima had sought her out again.  That when it came down to it, Cosima had chosen this. Chosen her.

“Come on, let’s go.” Cosima laughed happily, showing no sign of the same strange feeling.

“On va commencer notre vie à deux.” Delphine promised finally, holding out a hand for Cosima to hold.

“Mmm. Yup. Yes we are.”  Cosima giggled, pulling her from the washroom and towards their future.


	5. Rubatosis (otp324B21)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rubatosis: The unsettling awareness of your own heartbeat.

The room was smaller than she thought it would be, which was a good thing, she supposed. There were tiny pods of plastic, the sounds of whooshing and beeping filling the air. It was her first time there, and Cosima found that she was nervous. She had wanted to wait until the blonde was able to join her, but Delphine had begged her to go… to make sure. Cosima so rarely felt anxiety, but in that moment, she could feel it, creeping through her, starting in the pit of her stomach, setting a nausea in her that she wasn’t used to. It worked its way up her body, and she could feel her own heart. It was beating faster than it should be, a solid rhythm against her chest, the erratic nature making her lighthearted.

The room was spinning, the tiny space full of tiny plastic capsules of life and near-death. “You can do this.” She told herself, taking a step for each beat she felt, pushing blood through her veins and increasing the nausea. Each beat was timed with a heart monitor she could hear, two tiny blips for each beat she felt in her own chest.

There was a nurse, one of the nurses that had been there when the birth started, her scrubs colorful and full of whimsical animals that was borderline tacky. She looked up from what she was doing and smiled. “Hey. We were just changing her diaper.”

Cosima swallowed as she looked at the tiny form, two pads stuck to her bare chest, another stuck to her foot, monitoring her oxygen. The baby… their baby… still had a slight yellowish tinge and she was laying on a blanket that’s emitting blue lights, the tiniest blindfold she’d ever seen covering half her face. “How’s she doing?” She was trying to sound calm, but she could hear the shake in her voice as she wiped her hands on her own scrubs, still wearing them since the delivery room. She couldn’t help but wish Delphine was there with her, but the blonde was barely conscious, the unexpected labor having taken all her energy.

“She’s doing great.” The nurse smiled. “5lbs 2.5 oz and quite the attitude. The neoblue blanket should take care of the jaundice in no time.”

Cosima took a deep breath, feeling the burn of emotions somewhere between her nose and her eyes. She didn’t want to cry, but it was both beautiful and terrifying. “Is it ok if I…” She didn’t know what she even wanted. Was she allowed to hold a baby in the NICU? She’d seen movies where parents had their hands through the holes in the side of the cases, tiny fists wrapping around their finger. She noticed the nurse was wearing gloves and she couldn’t help but wonder if she should be too.

“Of course you can.” The nurse was oddly cheerful as she gestured to a chair. “Sit down.”

“Do I need, like gloves or something?”

The nurse shook her head, waiting for Cosima to sit down. “Of course not.” She wrapped the baby in the blanket, making sure the lights were carefully hidden within the soft covering before removing the small blindfold, easily placing the bundle in Cosima’s arms. She made sure the brunette had a good hold before standing back up, organizing the chords. “Have you two decided on a name yet?”

Her heart in her throat, Cosima let out a soft laugh she’d been holding back, a shaking hand coming up to brush against the dark hair that covered the tiny head. “Lily.” She couldn’t believe how tiny the infant was, their small miracle baby, too impatient to wait longer than 34 weeks before making an appearance. “Lily Elizabeth Cormier-Niehaus.”

“That’s a beautiful name.” The nurse smiled. “Maybe birth mommy will be up soon so and we can try breastfeeding?”

Nodding, Cosima watched as the nurse moved to check on another baby, leaving her with their new offspring, feeling the tears surfacing. Finally, with the tiny form in her arms, she felt her nervousness subsiding, the deep thrumming of her heartbeat slowing to normal levels, no longer threatening to break through her chest. She had read that parents always checked to make sure infants had all ten fingers and toes, but all four limbs were tucked away in the blanket, hoping to absorb the blue light that would break up the bilirubin in her body, so all she could do was admire the shape of the tiny button nose and wrinkled skin. “Hey Lily. I’m your mommy Cosima. Mommy Delphine is going to be so excited to see you.” Her words were just a whisper, an attempt to keep the peace in the room.

As if recognizing her voice, the tiny form began to wiggle around, the tiniest grunt Cosima had ever heard accompanying feet kicking weakly against the blanket, trying to get out. “Hey, you need to relax, Sweetie.” Tiny eyelids opened for the briefest of moments, grey eyes looking around, unable to focus on anything before closing again, tiny eyebrows wrinkled in distress. “Don’t worry, Lily. I won’t let anything happen to you. Neither will Mommy Delphine.” Cosima smiled, blinking away the tears. “I love you so much, Lily, and your other mommy and I are going to love you forever.” Another small sound came from the baby as the small brow relaxed and the kicking stopped, sleep overcoming the tiny form. She couldn’t wait until Delphine woke up.


	6. Kenopsia (arabybizarre)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kenopsia: The eerie, forlorn atmosphere of a place that is usually bustling with people but is now abandoned and quiet.

“Cosima… I think maybe we should go now.”

She hesitated for only a moment, glancing back at the look of wariness upon Delphine’s face, and chuckled. Balancing upon a crumbling stone wall—the perimeter of what had once been a large fountain, but was now just a concrete hole in the ground—she turned around to shine her flashlight in the blonde’s face.  Walking just quickly enough to be considered incautious, she grinned.

Delphine shook her head. “I’m serious,” she hissed, gasping slightly when Cosima stumbled, just barely catching herself before she fell. “If you won’t be careful,” she huffed, sprinting forward to pull the woman down by her jacket sleeve, “then you’re getting down.”

“Fine.” Cosima acquiesced easily, wearing a self-satisfied smirk. Kissing Delphine on the cheek, she said, “Still not leaving though.”

The blonde sighed. Growing up, she’d never cared much for amusement parks. For the most part, rides were unenjoyable to her, and she found the sights and sounds overwhelming. Unsurprisingly, she’d been less than thrilled when Cosima had cajoled her into breaking into an  _abandoned_ amusement park.

Granted, the brunette’s intentions were innocent. She’d brought Delphine home to meet her parents only a few days prior, and had been elated to show the blonde all of her childhood haunts. The amusement park had been one of her favorites. The fact that it had been closed for nearly three years hadn’t seemed to deter Cosima at all.

“Look,” the brunette shouted, waving the flashlight erratically. Delphine ignored the direction of the light, instead watching as the frustrating impishness she’d worn previously transformed into childlike excitement. In the span of a single instance, all of her thirty years fell away, her joy laid bare as the trees lining the walkway. In spite of herself, the blonde smiled.

Tearing her gaze from her girlfriend’s face, she followed her to the carousel some forty yards away.

“It’s exactly as I remember it,” Cosima said, facing her. In the crisp November air, her breath had begun to fog, meeting Delphine’s mouth in a soft plume. She shivered, Cosima’s brow furrowing. “Are you cold?”

“A little.”

“Here.” Delphine didn’t try to protest as Cosima removed her jacket, draping it over her shoulders. “This is my warmest sweater,” she said, predicting the blonde’s next comment. “I’ll be fine.”

“Merci.”

Cosima smiled, showing her teeth. The expression radiated heat. “C’mon,” she said, gripping Delphine’s hand. “Let’s take a closer look.”

Aside from her persistent worry that some security guard or disgruntled property owner would come roaring from the shadows at any moment, threatening to call the authorities, Delphine felt somewhat unsettled by the overall atmosphere of the park. In the three years since it had last been open, it had been completely overrun by flora. Several of the structures had been picked apart, looted or otherwise vandalized by careless opportunists. She couldn’t look anywhere without seeing crudely painted graffiti. Yet amongst this ruin, Cosima still shone brightly with glee.

“Come with me.” Without delay, the brunette began climbing over the carousel gate. She hopped onto the platform effortlessly, so transfixed upon the sight before her that she didn’t even stop to offer a helping hand to her girlfriend, who floundered slightly, her jeans catching on a dulled spike. “Wow,” Cosima muttered.

Her pace slowed as she walked around the carousel, studying the wooden menagerie closely. In addition to horses; tigers, giraffes, reindeer, and even pigs stood along the platform. All were frozen mid-gallop, mouths hanging open. At one time, Delphine was certain they must have looked majestic; now, however, they appeared eerily decrepit. Some had been lifted from their poles altogether, while others had begun to decay. She passed one horse who was missing a marbled eye, half of its face sunken in, the wood splintered. Inside its eye-socket, a spider’s web glimmered with beaded dew.

“Here!” Delphine startled at Cosima’s exclamation. A moment later, her feet echoed across the carpeted platform. “Come, look,” she beckoned, waving her over. As the blonde followed, rounding the center column, she saw Cosima running her hand over the back of a small elephant, its head thrown back, trunk curled atop its forehead. Though one of its tusks had broken off at the end, the animal was almost entirely intact. “This one was my favorite,” she said, beaming.

“Why the elephant?”

“Because there was only one,” Cosima told her. A moment later, she climbed onto its back. “Which one do you like the best?”

Delphine glanced around, settling on the reindeer next to the brunette’s elephant. “I think I just like whichever one is closest to yours.”

Cosima shook her head. “You’re no fun.” There was fondness in her voice. For several moments they sat in silence, Delphine’s eyes darting about the perimeter constantly, while the other woman rested her cheek against the pole, watching her. “I get the feeling you’re not a fan of amusement parks.”

Delphine shrugged, meeting her gaze. “Perhaps I just prefer to visit them lawfully.” Cosima snorted. “I suppose you’re right about that though.”

“Really?”

“You know I’m prone to motion sickness. I couldn’t stomach the rides.”

“Not even the carousel?”

“Non.” At Cosima’s skeptical look, she insisted, “I’m serious. It’s the concentric motions that make me sickest.”

“But it’s so slow.”

“I have a weak stomach.”

Cosima laughed. “Jesus. You would  _not_  have liked me as a kid.” Delphine laughed, too. “I used to ride the Tilt-A-Whirl a dozen times in a row. I absolutely loved it.”

The blonde cringed. “You’re right. You would have driven me crazy.”  
  


“Were there any rides you liked? Ferris Wheel?”

“I was afraid of heights.”

“Bumper cars?”

“I wasn’t a fan of the whiplash.”

“I’m assuming you weren’t big on roller coasters then either.”

“ _Non_ ,” she answered. Delphine watched as Cosima’s brow furrowed in thought. After a moment, her eyes widened, a smile crawling across her face.

“Got it,” she said, jumping down form her elephant.

“What is it?”

“Just follow me,” she said, voice brimming with confidence. Delphine felt somewhat doubtful, but could never deny the woman’s hand when offered to her. She allowed Cosima to lead her through the park, hopping over downed trashcans, leaves crunching beneath their feet. They were quiet for several moments before rounding a corner to find a large, blue building looming ahead. The structure would have appeared rather unspectacular if not for the  _awful_  clown painted over the entrance.

Delphine’s brows rose. “I also hated clowns,” she warned. “Still do.”

Cosima shook her head, hand waving in tandem. “It’s just a regular funhouse, Delphine. No clowns inside. I promise.”

“How can you be sure? You said yourself it’s been nearly fifteen years since you last visited.”

Cosima stopped suddenly, an oddly serious look in her eyes. “Just trust me. You’re safe, okay?”

After a moment, Delphine nodded. “Okay.”

“And I swear, if I see one clown in there, I will totally, like, kick its face in.”

“Okay,” Delphine chuckled, eliciting a smile. Cosima squeezed her hand.

The front doors had been padlocked at one point, but some other trespassers must have had similar plans. The lock hung uselessly from the hasp loop.

“Well, that’s convenient,” Cosima said, setting the broken lock on the ground. Carefully, she opened the door, kicking aside a pile of debris littered in the entrance.

While the walls had been saved from graffiti, the funhouse had clearly hosted at least one party since its closing. Empty cups, cans, and fast food bags were scattered across the hardwood floors. As Cosima’s flashlight scanned the room, Delphine spotted what she thought to be a used condom in the corner.

“Cosima,” she started, unsure of how to phrase her reluctance delicately. “It’s kind of… dirty in here.”

“No…” Cosima’s voice trailed off. “This was, like, my favorite place in the whole park when I was little.” Turning to Delphine, she said, “Aside from the trash, it’s not so bad.”

_Aside from the trash,_  Delphine thought, thoroughly unconvinced. She could only sigh. “If you say so…”

The funhouse was split into several rooms, each with a different obstacle. At one time, the second room they entered had been entirely glow in the dark, but now appeared woefully dull—a bad paint job. Another contained a large tunnel, the “barrel of fun,” Cosima explained, which while open, would rotate as patrons attempted to walk through. They encountered floors that rolled, stairs that shook, and a hall of shattered mirrors. Amongst the refuse in each were the vestiges of a forlorn childhood: deflated balloons; bug infested candy wrappers; a stuffed monkey, sopping wet in a puddle, one of its arms missing.

Cosima was unusually quiet as they navigated through the building, taking in the scenery without her typical commentary. Delphine wanted to say something to fill the space, but she was at a loss—out of place, shivering. After several minutes, they ascended into one last room, the center of which was a giant wooden slide. They’d entered at the top, and would exit at the bottom.

Cosima stared out over the entire room, her flashlight sweeping across the expanse. To Delphine’s surprise, she plopped down on the floor, sitting cross-legged at the top of the slide. Somewhat sheepishly, she said, “I’m sorry.”

“Why?” Delphine, slightly more concerned for the dust on the floor, sat down carefully beside her.

Cosima frowned. “This was stupid.”

“Why would you say that?” When Cosima looked away, Delphine gently grabbed her forearm. “You were so excited earlier. It’s not stupid.”

“I was excited,” she admitted. “I wanted to show you everything—everything about home. And I thought it would be cool to come here, since this was, like, my favorite place ever when I was a kid.”

“And?” Delphine nudged her to continue.

Cosima shrugged. “But you’re right, it’s been fifteen years.” She made to stand up suddenly, but the blonde grabbed her wrist, pulling her back down.

“Wait.” She searched Cosima’s face, unsure of what to make of the expression she wore—somewhat wistful, somewhat sad. “ _I’m_  sorry. I shouldn’t have complained so much.”

“No, it’s not  _your_ fault—”

“It’s nobody’s fault. Nothing is wrong. You shared something really nice with me. Something special.” She paused then. They’d spent many nights lying awake, sharing childhood memories with each other—and many times they had said things like,  _“I wish I could have known you as a kid,”_ or  _“I wish I could see what that’s like.”_  And while neither could turn back time, here, Cosima was sharing with her a physical piece of her history. “It means a lot to me that you would do that.”

The brunette turned to her finally. “Really?”

“Yes,” Delphine nodded.

Half a smile formed on Cosima’s lips before she turned away again. “I imagined this might be more romantic. Instead… it’s just kind of dirty.”

“You didn’t know it would look like this.”

“No,” Cosima sighed. She paused for a moment, staring pensively down the slide.

“Did you enjoy the slide, too? Or were you too much of a daredevil for that,” Delphine teased, attempting to lighten the mood.

“Yes,” Cosima was quick to answer. “I loved this actually.  _This_ , especially. It used to crack me up—I have no idea why.” She snorted slightly. “I’d slide down so many times I’d end up with brush-burns.”

“That was more my speed, you know. Minus the brush-burns.” Delphine rested her chin on Cosima’s shoulder. “We could have been slide buddies.”

“Maybe,” the brunette said, turning to plant a soft kiss on her girlfriend’s forehead. “It’s weird to think about—how it was then—and to see it now—just, like, falling apart.” Delphine nodded. “And like, I look around and I can see sort of what it was, maybe just under the dust. And it’s dead silent, but I can hear all the sounds, too. All the other kids running and shrieking, a bunch of little feet pounding on the hardwood. The carousel organ. The circus music.” She chuckled suddenly. “And my parents shouting,  _‘Cosima, wait!’ ‘Cosima, don’t!’—_ ”

Delphine’s laughter echoed through the room. “You have no idea how easy it is for me to imagine that.”

“You scream those things, too, sometimes. But then other times you scream things like,  _‘Cosima,_ don’t stop,  _for the love of’_ —” Delphine pinched her side. “Ow!”

“Brat.”

“It’s true.” Her chuckles petered out slowly. When she turned to the blonde again, her nose was wrinkled in thought. “What I mean though, is that… I knew it would be different, after so much time. But I also expected to see that place I loved, the way I loved it  _then_. And that all those years, they’d only be a shadow under it.” She paused. “It’s really the other way around though.”

“You just see the dust?”

“Yeah,” Cosima nodded. “It’s kind of… I don’t know. A little scary. Don’t you think?”

“Do you mean—getting older?”

“Not exactly. Just… the idea that something you loved so much could change—to the point that it would become unrecognizable. Naturally.” She gestured towards the state of collapse the room was in. “That’s just time, you know.”

Delphine hummed, deep in thought—a look that Cosima knew well. She waited. Finally, the blonde said, “It’s true, every place will fall apart over time. And every object, too. Because we love these things, but they cannot love us back.” She lifted her head, meeting the brunette’s gaze with surety, a warmth of her very own. “With people, it’s different. When we love, we say, ‘I will change, but I will not change the room that I keep for you.’ We can adapt. We will become different, but we will conform to the things that we care about. That is a choice that we make.”

Cosima’s hands had grown cold. Delphine grabbed them, held them between her own, warming them. “Maybe this place will disappear. Or the house that you grew up in.” She paused, smiling wistfully. “Or, say… the library, where we first met. Or our apartment. But that’s okay,” she said quietly, certainly. “I will move with you. And I hope you’ll move with me, too.”

Cosima didn’t respond. Instead, she learned forward, capturing Delphine’s lips with her own. It was a kiss with hunger, but not desperation—a kiss that  _knew_  it would be fed, that could count on never going hungry. Suddenly, the brunette pulled away, leaving Delphine to watch after her in curiosity. She stood, and promptly sat down behind the blonde, pulling her in between her legs.

“What are you doing,” Delphine asked, amused. Cosima’s arms wrapped tightly around her middle. She could feel the woman’s smile against her ear when she next spoke.

“You want me to move with you?” She edged forward slightly, pushing her girlfriend along with her. “Then let’s move.  _Slide buddy._ ”

Delphine laughed as they slid towards the exit, a cloud of dust roused in their wake. As they finally stepped foot out the door, it had yet to settle, suspended, just as Cosima would remember it.


	7. Jouska (kind-of-always-late)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jouska: A hypothetical conversation that you compulsively play out in your head.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set in season three between episodes six and seven.

Delphine sat at her desk and sighed wearily, nearly collapsing into her chair as she tossed yet another overstuffed folder onto her desk. She unfastened the top few buttons of her blouse and fell forward, elbows propped on the desk, burying her hands in straightened locks. Even after this much time, the feel of it still surprised her. A part of her missed the wild curls; another part of her thought that perhaps she’d simply chop it all off tomorrow.  
  
She didn’t bother to turn and gaze out of her office window – at this time of night the view was rarely much different than it was on any other night. The window might be slightly frosted over, and the buildings around her would be harshly lit, belying their probable vacancy at this hour. A thin mist would likely hang in the chilly night air, transforming the few cars dotting the roads into hazy, luminescent orbs.

And it would be silent, from this vantage point. Above all, it would be absolutely, unsettlingly silent.  
  
Delphine reluctantly cracked open her laptop and set to work on one of the various stacks of papers piled before her. Although she’d more than anticipated the element of _danger_ present here, she’d never quite considered the multitudes of _paperwork_ associated with Rachel’s former position. She sighed again.  
  
In a way she was grateful for it, though. With no relationships to distract her and with this ever-worsening entwinement with insomnia, filling in charts and organizing data proved to be a strangely soothing way to pass the time.

And it would all be worth it, in the end. It had to be. She had never risked quite so much – had never thought herself much of a gambler before now. But then again, she’d never possessed much she’d cared to lose. Most positions, most things, most relationships – they had all seemed interchangeable before. Replaceable, disposable, inconsequential. Life was all a game of logic, and Delphine had played it all expertly. It was easy, when you had so few attachments. When you felt you had so little to lose.  
  
But attachments, she supposed, wrapped themselves around bones and wove through the tissues of your heart when you least needed them (when you never _wanted_ them). Usually she had little trouble shaking them off. But with Cosima? Those seeds had settled in deep from the start and bloomed through her beautifully, mercilessly, wholly, entwining with muscle and bone. Pulsing with her heart and flooding through her veins until she could scarcely remember how it felt to be without these roots and leaves winding through her.  
  
She’d never _wanted_ it, no. Especially now, she couldn’t afford to cloud her judgment in this way. So she’d done her best to prune away the flowers and the leaves of her desire. Cut back these blooms and stalks and leave the roots for later – let them grow back at a time more convenient than now. It did seem logical, after all.

But now she feared that she’d perhaps misjudged how completely Cosima had become a part of her – that this was not something that could simply be laid dormant while she paused to play her required part (at least, not easily). 

She wrapped her fingers around the neck of the bottle. Uncapped it. Watched, detached and weary, as the amber liquid poured heavy into the crystal. Pressed her eyes shut as it burned something like  _comfort_  down her throat and pulsed stinging warmth through her veins.

She hadn’t been able to touch wine since arriving in Frankfurt - not since being forced to leave Cosima that first time. It carried with it too many memories of a warm smile, the press of lips to a cheek, the icy bite of winter air in her lungs as she rushed through a courtyard with a soft hand entwined with hers. Memories of nights spent curled together, skin pressed to skin, content and very much not alone. She shook her head roughly in a vain attempt to dislodge the memories.

Yes. It would all be worth it, in the end. Even if now Cosima would hardly look at her ( _could_ hardly look at her) and chose instead to lose herself in the company of another. It was understandable, after all. After what Delphine had chosen to do. After what she felt she _had_ to do. And Cosima would forgive her (would love her) in the end. Wouldn’t she? That was, she supposed, part of the gamble. Cosima’s forgiveness. Cosima’s love.  
  
It was a scenario that she allowed to play out in her mind again and again; a conversation she ached to have, but could not have just yet. _In the end_ , she told herself. _In the end._ One day soon she would fall back into Cosima’s arms, exhausted, and explain everything. But for now, at least, she could placate herself with the fantasy of the thing. Could hide from these sterile, angular DYAD rooms with a simple closing of her eyelids and a well-rehearsed phantom conversation. Even imagined, Cosima’s forgiveness was enough to keep her pushing forward.

She gave up on the papers, took a sip of whisky, and began to sift through her emails. More failed European trials, more updates on Cosima, more photos of Cosima and Shay. Another sip of whisky. She hovered a moment over the delete button – afraid of what these new photos might contain – but couldn’t quite bring herself to do it. It was her _job_ , after all. She sighed and sifted through the photos and text as quickly as possible, making the requisite notes. By the end of it, her glass was somehow in need of a refilling.  
  
_Shay_.

Truthfully, that was a development she had not anticipated. Stupidly, she had not considered that pushing Cosima away might lead her to another.  
  
And would Cosima still want her, after all she would have to do? After she had fulfilled her part in this grand, stupid game? _Yes, of course_ , she’d continuously told herself. But then again, if she could have someone outside of all of this…  
  
She wondered if it was the same. She wondered if it was… better. This woman, who in all probability had had… _experience_ in these matters. Would she hesitate to touch her, as Delphine had? Would Cosima moan for her the same way, nails pinching bright red crescents into her back? Was it so, so easy for Cosima to fall in love? When for Delphine it was such a rare thing. When for Delphine, nothing had ever felt like this.  
  
_Non_ , she assured herself. Cosima had to feel it, too. She _had_ to.  
  
She half-drained her glass. Refilled it again. She had work to do, but the whisky had warmed her mind into a pleasant fog and she felt an all too familiar ache between her thighs. She sighed. She would finish no more work tonight. Instead, she’d let the scenario play out again: Cosima, forgiving her. Cosima, missing her with the same aching loneliness. Cosima, encompassing her and pressing against her in a flurry of sweat and skin and…  
  
“Delphine?”  
  
Delphine started.  
  
“ _Quoi_?”  
  
Cosima stood just inside the now open door of her office, eyebrows raised.  
  
Delphine collected herself as best she could, crossing her legs and straightening her spine while she quickly gathered the papers on her desk into a folder. She watched helplessly as Cosima’s eyes darted to the half-empty bottle and to the generously filled glass.  
  
“What are you doing here?” Cosima asked.  
  
“I could ask you the same question,” Delphine responded curtly.

Cosima simply shrugged.  
  
“I’m not coming in tomorrow, so I was just gonna leave you my latest lab results.”  
  
“At one in the morning? You could have just emailed them,” Delphine replied, standing stiffly to remove the pile of papers from her desk. She deposited them in a nearby cabinet before crossing her arms and turning back towards Cosima.  
  
“I, um… Scott and I ran the tests outside of DYAD,” Cosima explained, gesticulating with folder in hand. “I didn’t want to send them through their system. I was just, um, leaving these for you.”  
  
“Oh,” Delphine said, softening slightly. Did Cosima finally regard her as separate from DYAD, despite her new position? She couldn’t help that her heart warmed a bit at the thought, at this tiny display of trust.

“Uh, here. I guess,” she offered, handing the folder to Delphine.  
  
Delphine took it wordlessly, careful not to brush her fingers against Cosima’s.  
  
Cosima’s eyes darted to the bottle again, and back to Delphine.  
  
“Delphine,” she began, concern etched in her features, “Are you…like, okay?”  
  
Her voice was too gentle and her gaze much too soft. Delphine bit her lip to keep the tears welling in her eyes from cascading over.  
  
“ _Oui_ , ehm… yes. Just… I’m tired. You know, working late.” She gestured vaguely to the room around her before hugging her arms more tightly across her frame.  
  
Cosima regarded her skeptically, cautiously strolling to the desk. She picked up the bottle, tilting it so that it caught light and shone amber onto her skin.  
  
“Lagavulin, huh? My grandpa drinks this stuff. Since when do you drink Scotch?”  
  
Delphine sighed, exhausted. “Why does it matter, Cosima?”  
  
“I guess it doesn’t,” she allowed, but then paused a beat before looking at Delphine pointedly. “Except that I was in here earlier this morning, and at that point I’m pretty sure this bottle was full.”

Delphine flushed and stiffened. Her gaze dropped to the floor.  
  
“What’s up with you, Delphine? Just… talk to me. Please.”

There was a tenderness to her that Delphine had not witnessed for quite some time – at least, not directed at herself. As of late Cosima had been all stone eyes, steel glances and turned shoulder. It was easier not to care, when she shut her out in this way. Easier not to miss her, when she offered no reminder of the affection that had existed between them. But now…

_Tu me manques, tu me manques, tu me manques._

The words screamed silent in Delphine’s mind, threatening to push past her lips. Her thoughts were still muddled and cloudy from the alcohol, but for the moment she wasn’t quite certain why she shoudln’t simply allow the words to escape.

“Cosima, I… ehm…” But she shook her head, unable to form any sort of sentence.  
  
“Delphine, just tell me,” Cosima pleaded, eyes clear with determination. “Just–”  
  
“I know about Shay,” Delphine blurted, eyes widening at her own slip.  
  
Cosima stared blankly.

“Oh.”  
  
Delphine shifted her weight uncomfortably from one foot to the other, arms still iron-crossed over her body.

“You broke up with _me_ , Delphine,” Cosima whispered.  
  
“I know,” Delphine breathed, barely giving voice to the words. Her gaze fell yet again to the floor.  
  
_But not because I wanted to._

“And I just, I thought… I mean, I know why you did it. I get it. I was angry at first, but… I get that you can’t do this right now. So I just thought… it might make it easier? For me, anyway. To have someone, someone to…” She was stumbling, tripping over her words as her hands gestured wildly, trying to grasp onto some clear explanation. “And it’s not like it means anything, with her. It’s just, like, I need this right now. And…” Delphine’s gaze rose to meet hers, hopeful. Cosima looked at her squarely, hands finally still.  
  
“It doesn’t mean that I don’t still love you.”  
  
Delphine inhaled sharply, not expecting to hear those words. But the way that Cosima was looking at her now, eyes vibrant and glistening…  
  
“I _understand_ , Delphine. I do. It’s okay.” 

Delphine choked out an ugly sob before she even noticed the tears streaming down her face. She tried to turn away, smearing the back of her hand over her face, but instead she felt a gentle hand on her arm guiding her back. She looked down to find Cosima gazing up at her, smiling softly, hands now tenderly cradling her face.  
  
“I love you, Delphine. I’ve never loved anyone like I love you.”  
  
Delphine managed something between a sob and a laugh, smiling as she brought her fingertips up to rest lightly against Cosima’s cheek. Cosima smiled back, and Delphine closed the distance between them.  
  
Delphine’s chest swelled as Cosima’s lips parted hers and her hands settled firmly into the small of her back, pulling their bodies tightly together. Cosima backed her against the desk, slipping a knee between her thighs. Delphine groaned – she had missed this so, _so_ desperately. And now, she was here. Here, kissing her with a slow, deliberate urgency, and pressing against her with surprising strength.

Delphine gasped, grasping for a fistful of Cosima’s hair and tilting her head back so that she could kiss down her neck to her collarbone.  
  
“ _Je t'aime, Je t'aime_ ,” she breathed into the skin there. Cosima moaned, and Delphine could feel the flutter of her heartbeat quickening beneath her lips. “ _Oh mon dieu, tu m’as manqué._ ”  
  
“ _God_ , Delphine,” Cosima groaned, arching her hips up. “ _God_ , just let me…”  
  
Cosima pulled Delphine’s face back up to meet hers with both hands, kissing her fully, before slipping her hands down to unfasten the remaining buttons of Delphine’s blouse.

“Wait, wait,” Delphine stopped her, clasping Cosima’s hands at her chest. She kept her gaze to the floor. “What about… what about Shay?”  
  
She lifted her eyes to meet Cosima’s, guardedly hopeful.

“I don’t care about Shay,” Cosima responded immediately. “I want you. I love you.” 

It was everything Delphine wanted to hear, and yet…  
  
“Cosima, I still have to…. I mean we still cannot…” Delphine faltered, suddenly unsure of what she had wanted to say now that Cosima’s lips were pressing into the hollow of her neck.  
  
“We’ll figure it out, Delphine. It’s okay,” Cosima assured her, beginning to kiss down her chest. “Right now, just let me… _please_.” Her last words were nearly a growl.  
  
And with that, Delphine was gone.

She fell back onto the desk, her unbuttoned blouse still hanging from her frame, as Cosima made her way down her body. As she fell back she knocked her laptop, the whisky, and most of the remaining papers to the floor.  
  
“Shit,” Cosima said, pausing. “Do you–”  
  
“I don’t care,” Delphine interrupted, roughly guiding Cosima’s head back between her breasts. Cosima chuckled a moment before pushing Delphine’s bra up and tracing her tongue around a nipple. She bit down softly and Delphine let out a quiet whimper, arching her back a bit. Cosima smiled into Delphine’s skin as she moved down to her stomach, pausing to dip her tongue into her navel.  
  
“Co-si-ma, _please_.” Delphine was outright moaning now. She couldn’t take this teasing when it had been so long – when she had feared this might never happen again. Already she felt as if she might come undone, and Cosima hadn’t even touched her yet.  
  
“ _S'il te plait_ ,” she begged, grasping the back of Cosima’s head as she raised her hips up.  
  
Cosima moaned, all playfulness gone, struggling to remove Delphine’s slacks and underwear as she kissed the jut of her hipbone.

At last, Delphine felt herself naked from the waist down. Her blouse still hung open, her bra rucked up above her breasts. She could see her chest heaving as she looked down her body to see Cosima nestled between her thighs.  
  
“ _Fuuuck_ , Delphine,” she groaned, kissing and biting at the inside of her thigh.  
  
“Co-si-ma,” Delphine pleaded, breathless.  
  
Finally, _finally_ , Cosima gave in. 

Delphine cried out immediately, reflexively biting into the inside of her own wrist to muffle the sound. She’d missed the feel of her, the motion of her, the heat of her. _Mon dieu_ , the heat of her mouth. Her tongue. The little vibrations as she whimpered into her, the strong hands that dug into her thighs before sliding across slick skin to tease at her entrance. She missed her _inside_.  
  
She was close, so close, but it wasn’t quite right. She didn’t want it this way.  
  
“Co-Cosima,” she panted, attempting to prop herself up on the desk.  
  
“Hmmmmm?” she moaned low and long into her, fingers still working a steady pace inside of her.  
  
“Come here. I want you here, with me.”  
  
Cosima moved quickly up her body until they were again flush together, face to face. She kissed her open-mouthed, messy, desperate.  
  
“I love you, Delphine.”  
  
Delphine could only whimper in response, gasping as she finally tumbled over the edge, trembling in Cosima’s arms.  
  
_Je t'aime, Je t'aime, Je t'aime_ , she thought over and over. _Je t’aime_.

She was crying again, and Cosima was cradling her face.  
  
“Hey, hey, c’mon. Was it that bad?” She smiled wryly.  
  
Delphine laughed through her tears, swatting playfully at Cosima.  
  
“Brat!” she teased.  
  
“But you love me.”  
  
Delphine gazed into Cosima’s shining amber eyes, at the smile split wide across her face, and felt flowers blooming in her again.  
  
“ _Oui. Je t'aime_ , Cosima. _Je t'aime_ ,” she promised, kissing her frantically as the tears continued to stream down her face.

“Hey, hey. It’s okay, Delphine,” she assured her. “It’ll all be okay, in the end. We’ll get through this.”  
  
Delphine frowned.  
  
_It’ll all be okay, in the end.  
  
_ Cosima’s image still smiled lovingly back at her.  
  
_In the end, it will all be okay. It will be._

 _But not now,_ Delphine lamented.  
  
Reluctantly, she opened her eyes.

The stacks of papers still sat untouched on the desk along with her overfull glass of whisky. She was alone. She was alone, and the room was silent apart for the low hum of the overhead lights. She looked down at herself, her open laptop casting a mellow glow over the scene from its place on her desk: her blouse, fully open and bra pushed up above her breasts, and her own fingers still resting beneath the fabric of her underwear. 

Delphine flushed, wildly embarrassed even though she was alone. She’d played out this scenario with Cosima so many times in her mind, but it had never actually come to _this_. She had never actually.... _no_ , never. And especially not in such a public place.  
  
She slipped her hand back out from beneath the waistband of her pants, buttoning them quickly, and wiped her fingers on a spare tissue. She straightened her spine, adjusted her bra, and rebuttoned her blouse back up to the top button. Meticulously she cleared away the mess of papers and alcohol off of her desk before walking stiffly out of her office and into the icy corridor. She was fairly certain she was trembling.  
  
_But it would all be okay, in the end. It had to be._  
  
For now, though, her anxious mind would call Cosima to appear to her in the most ridiculous and unlikely of situations. She would wait for her outside of her car, inside of her apartment, or in the lab in the dead of night. She would stumble across her in a lonesome bar, pass by her on a bustling street, or collide with her in a crowded supermarket. Anything to spur the start of that conversation, of her forgiveness, of their reunion.  
  
And Cosima would forgive her, every time. She would understand. She would cradle her face, would kiss her neck, would simply hold her close. Sometimes she would take her, would make her moan desperately for her. But always she would leave her hollow – hollow apart from these roots and vines that constricted her breathing and strangled her chest.  
  
But she would survive it – would breathe shakily through the thick of it all. Would craft her lies with pursed lips, spin deceit with a tight smile, and fulfill her role in this elaborate game.  
  
Once home, Delphine pulled another bottle down from the shelf. Filled another glass. She could feel the roots splitting with spider web intricacy through her chest again, cracking it open wide, and she could think of nothing else to dull the raw ache of it.  
  
She kicked off her heels, leaving them in the middle of the hall, and pushed open the door to her bedroom. She paused at the threshold.  
  
Cosima looked up at her from where she sat cross-legged on the bed. Delphine sighed.  
  
“Cosima.”  
  
“Hey, Delphine. I hope you don’t mind, I just –”  
  
Delphine smiled sadly, setting her glass on the bedside table. She wasn’t sure she had the the energy for this again tonight, and yet…  
  
Cosima smiled warmly at her, and she returned it somewhat wearily.  
  
_Because it would all be worth it, in the end._  
  
She joined Cosima on the bed.  
  
_It had to be._


	8. Vemödalen (arabybizarre)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vemödalen: The frustration of photographic something amazing when thousands of identical photos already exist.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Delphine is a photography student, and Cosima is her favorite subject (an affinity that would seem more fitting if only Cosima weren’t a complete stranger)

By ten pm Thursday night, the gallery is nearly empty. A few of her closest, most inebriated friends mill about the room, laughing drunkenly at each other to stave off boredom. Their voices echo through the tiny room, filling the eaves with flippant conversation. Jaw tightening, Delphine clutches her plastic cup of Chablis tighter, turning towards the wall.

Her eyes burn. She hadn’t expected the other students to be lined up out the door, but she’d expected at least a mild reception. It wasn’t the most prestigious gallery in the area—on the contrary, it could barely be considered a  _gallery_ at all _._ At one time, it had been a café, sandwiched between an all-night laundromat and a Chinese takeout restaurant. Five years back it had been bought by the University’s Fine Arts Department and repurposed to showcase the art of up-and-coming seniors. Delphine had been elated when her advisor had chosen her work for the final exhibition of the year. She’d spent weeks preparing—not just choosing the right photographs to display; but choosing the right outfit; the right topics of conversation, should someone ask.

As it turns out, all of her stress had been in vain. A few of her peers had shown up to offer their support, but aside from her friends, most had opted to head to the bar down the street instead.

_“It’s one of the last Thirsty Thursdays of the semester,”_  her friend Valerie had offered consolingly, half lit off her own bottle of wine.  _“Don’t take it personally.”_

It’s hard not to though. Her own parents had spent so much time deriding her field of study, belittling photography as a lesser art form.

_“It’s not as difficult as it used to be, Delphine. Everyone thinks themselves a photographer. Even your grandmother does, since we bought her an iPhone.”_

What her mother could not understand, however, as she’d patronized Delphine’s passion, was that her reasons for photography being an obsolete art form were the very same reasons why Delphine felt the need to pursue it in the first place: anybody could do it, yes; but only a few could be great at it.

Taking a long sip of her drink, Delphine narrows her eyes, scrutinizing her own photos as she has done countless times before. To see them now, hanging upon the gallery wall, illuminated by those bright yellow lights, adds a certain level of gravitas that denudes them completely, leaving every flaw of her craft on display.

The subject matter holds too little significance, she realizes. For months she’d been candidly taking photos of other students in and around campus—hustling to and from buildings, falling asleep in the library, catching a few extra moments of quiet study time with their morning coffees. Her attempt had been to accurately capture the pressures of a failing academic system.

All the faces hanging upon the wall look tired. Some of them disgruntled, or even on the verge of emotional collapse. As a whole, she could see now that they did not all fit together. The message they were sending was not a tale of caution or of reproach. It was simply exhausting.

She has to look away, suddenly embarrassed by her efforts. Her professors had commended her on this collection, but had she made a lasting impression? Would they tell their colleagues of her work?

Glancing away, her eyes land on a row of portraits along the far wall. Without thinking, she swiftly crosses the floor, sighing in relief as her gaze traces that familiar smirk.

Up to this point in her career, she’d followed two rules. She never photographed people that she knew intimately well—including friends, family, or lovers—and she never photographed the same subject more than once. Strangers were kinder to her, to her lens, their lives more fleeting and malleable. The less she knew someone, the easier it was to objectify or impose a story on them. She sometimes felt cold for thinking this way, but knew it was part of her job. The most personal work was always produced through harsh and impersonal means.

But here was this girl—this  _woman_ , really, for she couldn’t have been any younger than Delphine herself—mounted upon the wall on three different occasions. She smiles slightly over the rim of her glass. Her face was simply too expressive to ignore. Too soft, too bright, too sure. Even on her bad days she’d drawn the photographer’s lens with an almost affronting ease.

From a distance, Delphine had met her nearly two dozen times, though they’d never exchanged words. Through the eye of the camera they had strolled the same paths in the park, side-by-side; they’d shared coffees and memories and anxieties.

“Hey, Delphine!”

From a distance, she’d allowed this woman a deeper glimpse into her life than she’d allowed even those who’d stood beside her tonight. The imagined intimacy had been thrilling, dangerous. It had felt vulnerable—more so than anything that now lined the gallery’s walls.

“Delphine—” She startles when Valerie grabs her arm. The other girl laughs. “Sorry.”

“What is it?”

“Are you going to be much longer here? The rest of us were thinking of hitting the bar.”

Delphine frowns. “The gallery doesn’t close until eleven.”

“You have to stay the whole time?” Valerie glances around, brow furrowed, oblivious to her offense. “No one else is here. It’s probably okay if you leave.”

“I shouldn’t,” she answers, sighing. She averts her eyes, landing on the photos of her mystery subject.

“Doctor Adams isn’t going to lecture you if—”

“Valerie,” she interjects, exasperated. Taking a breath, she tells her, more calmly, “If you guys want to go—go. I’ll meet you later.”

After a moment, Valerie nods reluctantly. “If you say so.”

It’s a relief to see them leave. Rather, she hears the door open behind her. By the time they exit, her back is to them. She’s looking at the nameless woman again.

Delphine has many regrets about this night, about the photos she’d chosen. Her biggest is that she’d ever hung these. She realizes now that these do not belong to anybody but her—they were not  _taken for_  anybody but her. They are not artistic. They are not a technical wonder. But she looks at them, and she feels somehow less lonely.

The others though—Doctor Adams, and Valerie, and all of her friends—they would look at these photos, at this woman, and all they could possibly see is what they would see in every other face in the gallery.

“Merde.” Before she can even question herself, she is tearing those three photos from the wall. It’s the right thing, she knows. This woman is not like all the others. She does not belong here.

This woman belongs at home, tucked away in Delphine’s secret drawer, where she hides letters unsent; ticket stubs from dates that had once meant something more; and at the bottom, several photographs of this enticing stranger—photographs that she is ashamed to look at most days, but whose presence make her feel oddly serene.

Downing the remainder of her wine, she crosses the room and begins stuffing the photos in the purse she stashed beneath the refreshment table. She glances back at the empty space on the wall where they had been moments before. Shaking her head, she turns away, pulling her bag atop the table.

Now that she’s alone, she has the sudden urge to call it a night, in spite of what she told Valerie. She has no desire to rejoin her friends, however. No desire to be around anybody at all. Debating a hasty retreat, she pours out the last of the Chablis, and takes another sip.

Delphine feels so ashamed she can’t even look up when she hears the door open again. She assumes at first that one of her friends has returned, perhaps out of some sense of guilt or loyalty. However, a glance out of the corner of her eye proves otherwise.

She shuffles from foot-to-foot for a moment, feeling awkward and unsure, hoping this spectator doesn’t feel the need to engage her in conversation. How could she defend any of this now? She takes a sip of her wine, just trying to fill space.

“Excuse me.”

Her head snaps up when this stranger—this woman—calls to her, heart skipping just a whisper before her mind can even process the all-too-familiar glasses, the neatly pulled back dreadlocks and charming smile.

“Did you take these?”

Delphine looks at the woman pointing to the wall, then down into the purse beside her, where that same face is printed upon a hidden photograph. When she glances back up, her hesitation plain, the woman is smiling at her expectantly, her face gentle. All Delphine can do is nod.

The woman glances back to the photos and her smile broadens. “Wow.” The awe in her voice is so plain, so sincere, Delphine’s eyes sting. She bites her lip against it, feeling instant embarrassment. “These are, like… beautiful.” The woman balks suddenly, and begins to chuckle. “I mean—sorry.” She turns back to Delphine, a bit more sheepishly. “That probably sounds pretty lame. I’m not really well-versed in photographer jargon.”

Delphine chuckles, too—almost too loud in her nervousness, though the woman doesn’t seem to mind. “No,” she assures her, “that’s fine. That’s…” she blushes. “That’s a good compliment.”

“Good, good.” The woman is distracted—intrigued—by her photos. She meanders about the room, studying them with a naive meticulousness. In spite of her place in the room, Delphine feels as if she is the one on display, the one being stared at.

After several moments of silence, punctuated only by the woman’s sporadic mumbling, she wanders over to the refreshment table, nodding to herself with a strange sort of exuberance. Her eyes can’t seem to focus on anything at all, until finally, they focus on the photographer.

“Delphine, right?”

She’s caught mid-sip. “I’m—uh—oui. Yes,” she sputters without charm, covering her mouth with the back of her hand. “Delphine Cormier,” she tries again, a bit more confidently.

“Yeah,” the woman grins. “Your name was on the poster outside. I saw a couple on campus, too.”

“Yes,” Delphine agrees dumbly. Hadn’t she prepared for conversations like this? “Thank you for coming.”

“Of course,” the woman says happily. “I was just—I was walking home from the library—” Up close, Delphine is entranced by the way the woman’s hands move so effusively as she speaks. “I thought I would stop in. I’m glad I wasn’t too late.” She looks around, first at the emptiness of the room, then to Delphine’s bag on the table. “I’m not too late, right? I mean—I’m sorry, you were cleaning up—”

The photographer’s heart leaps when the woman appears to be backing up, glancing towards the door. “No, no,” she tells her, waving her hands. She sets her cup down on the table. “I’m here until eleven.” When the woman appears skeptical, she gestures towards the wine. “Please—would you like a drink? It’s free.”

After a beat, the woman readjusts the strap of her own bag over her shoulder, and nods. “Okay, uhm… yeah. Yeah—do you mind if I set my bag down?”

“Of course. Go ahead,” Delphine says, busying herself with pouring the woman a cup of wine. A moment later, she hands the woman her drink, smiling. “Here you are, uhm—”

“Cosima,” she says, taking the drink, grinning. “And thanks.”

“ _Cosima_ ,” Delphine repeats. It feels in her mouth as those photos had felt her hands when she’d hung them in the University’s darkroom. “I hope Cabernet is all right. I’m afraid it’s all that’s left.”

“Oh, yeah,” she chuckles. “I’m not picky.”

“Good,” Delphine chuckles with her.

After a sip, Cosima comments, “You must have had some turn out.”

“Oh, uh—why do you say that?”

The brunette gestures towards the refreshment table. “The snacks look like they were picked clean.”

Delphine blushes. That had been the work of her friends. She’d taken care of the second bottle of wine almost entirely on her own.

“It was okay,” she says.

“ _Okay_ ,” Cosima smiles. “How modest.” Delphine blushes again. “You go to the university?”

“Yes. I’m graduating in a couple weeks, actually.”

“Lucky you.”

“Are you also a student?”

“Yeah. No graduation in sight though. At this rate, it feels like I’ll never finish.”

“Oh… what’s your major?”

“Evo-Devo.” At Delphine’s oblivious look, she explains, “Evolutionary Developmental Biology. Really cool shit, actually. I kind of feel like I’m losing my mind over it at this point though.”

Delphine chuckles. “I’m sorry.”

“Nah. I like that.”

“You like crazy?”

Suddenly, an impish glint flashes in Cosima’s eyes. “I said I was losing my mind. I never said anything about crazy.”

“Good to know.”

They’re both trying to look cool, to look at anything but each other when their eyes meet accidentally. Delphine inhales quietly over the rim of her cup, while in the same breath, Cosima exhales over hers. For a moment, the gaze holds in defiance, before they both look away again.

After a moment of pregnant silence, Cosima glances up, squinting slightly. The blonde is instantly reminded of one of the photographs tucked into her purse—Cosima, squinting into the sunlight as she searches for something hidden in the trees.

“Hey,” she begins, “sorry if this is a stupid question, but… have we met before?” Delphine glances down at her bag again, heart beating a little faster.  _Yes,_  she thinks, _yes, dozens of times._  “I’ve just got, like, this feeling. Like, I’ve definitely seen you before.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, yeah. And I feel like… I don’t know. Like I had to have met you somewhere before. Maybe at a party or something?”

“Maybe…” Delphine says. Cosima continues to squint at her. She bites her lip. “I think we go to the same park, actually.”

“The park?”

“The one off campus.”

Cosima’s eyes light. “Yeah. I’m there all the time.”

“Three days a week.” Delphine’s cheeks burn the moment it escapes her mouth. “Usually…”

Cosima chuckles again. “Yeah. I always go on my lab days, between my evening classes.”

“Oh, okay. I go there to take pictures.”

“Really?” The brunette glances around, intrigued. In that moment, Delphine hesitates. She opens her mouth once, as if to explain, then stops herself suddenly. “What?”

She takes a chance then, because, why not? It  _feels_  like pure chance that this strange, entrancing woman walked in here tonight—pure chance that they would meet at all. Without thinking, she takes a breath and pulls the photos from her purse.

Cosima takes them when offered, staring at them with a furrowed brow. When she finally glances back up at Delphine, the blonde is certain she must think she’s a little crazy.

“Sorry,” Delphine says. “Uhm… I don’t usually talk to my subjects, so…”

Cosima’s eyes widen slightly.  “Do you want me to, like… leave?”

“No,” Delphine corrects, a little too quickly. “No, I just…” She shakes her head, an explanation coming out in a rush. “It feels weird to be standing here talking to you when I have these pictures in my bag. And with you asking me if we’ve met—no,” she says. “Not really. But I see you all the time, and you’re one of my favorite people to photograph…” She allows the words to trail off, feeling instantly stupid. Cosima simply stares at her, brows high, eyes wide behind her glasses.

After a pause, she asks, “Me?”

“Yeah,” Delphine says matter-of-factly, slightly exasperated with her own foolishness. “You can keep them if you want,” she finishes, glancing down at her feet.

“Really?” The blonde nods, Cosima’s eyes remaining wide. After a moment, she smiles, reaching towards her own bag. “Hold on.” Delphine watches in curiosity. After a few seconds of searching, the brunette pulls out her phone, holding it in front of the photographer’s face. “Yeah, hold on.”

She snaps a picture. And then another.

“What are you doing?” Delphine chuckles, feeling shy.

“I’m returning the favor. Here—pretend you’re looking at something over there. Be moody.” Delphine can only laugh more, feeling nervous and oddly relieved. “Okay,” Cosima concludes, scrolling through the photos. She stops, thumb hovering over the screen, and smiles softly. Holding up the phone for Delphine to see, she says, “Like it?”

Truthfully, it’s a terrible photo. But Cosima is grinning, and she can’t help but grin, too. “It’s nice,” she nods.

“It is,” the brunette agrees. “Now, uhm… you gave me pictures, so I have to, like, send this to you, too.”

“Oh?”

Cosima glances up, somewhat sheepishly. “Can I get your number?”

It dawns on her then, a bit belatedly, that she hasn’t ruined this entire encounter. In fact, it’s been more successful than any she’d engaged in all night. Smiling, she takes the phone from Cosima’s hand, sending the photo herself.

“Don’t forget to save that,” she tells her.

With a disbelieving look, Cosima shakes her head. “I won’t.”


	9. Chrysalism (Cophinaphile)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chrysalism: The amniotic tranquility of being indoors during a thunderstorm.

For some minutes, minutes that passed slowly enough to be hours, she laid with her shoulder length blonde hair fanned out across her girlfriend’s lap. And for each of those minutes she kept her eyes closed. Her chest rose and fell with a calm regularity that might have been edging her toward sleep if she weren’t so enchanted with the moment.   Gentle fingers scratched their way lightly along her scalp as thunder rumbled in the background, the occasional clap coaxing an impressed smile that faded with its echo back into her placid countenance.   A fierce wind threw sheets of water against the windows.  The roses outside, which had gotten leggy and wild from benign neglect, scratched against the siding of the house.  A power outage had extinguished the omnipresent buzz of electronics and small motors, rendering the house truly silent, and allowing the hypnotic rhythm of the rain upon the roof to permeate every corner of their home and minds.

Though their work meant they were accustomed to interrogating nature, in this moment neither Delphine nor her beloved Cosima had any interest in thought or speech; rather they reveled in the simultaneity of being both enveloped by and protected from the fury of a summer storm.


	10. Lachesism (mveloc)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lachesism: the desire to be struck by disaster—to survive a plane crash, to lose everything in a fire, to plunge over a waterfall—which would put a kink in the smooth arc of your life, and forge it into something hardened and flexible and sharp, not just a stiff prefabricated beam that barely covers the gap between one end of your life and the other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Takes place in season three, with some canon divergence.

She’s only vaguely aware of how stiff the mattress beneath her is as she goes falling back into it, a heavy burst of air forced from her lungs as soon as she makes impact. Somewhere in the farthest corner of her mind, she knows it’s because it’s barely been used, neglected by its owner who’s traded their nights together for longer ones in an office, a lab, drawing cards and playing hands both swiftly and cautiously, as if she’s played this game a thousand times before but is still somehow uncertain of the rules. She’d caught her sleeping in the lab once, tucked away in the comfort of the chill zone with papers covering her still form on the couch, some having fallen onto the floor. Clearly she hadn’t expected the petite brunette to arrive so early, which is why she sought refuge in their old safe haven in the first place. The cheeky young scientist had half the mind to wake her and throw her out, to expel her from such hallowed grounds that her very presence now polluted, but as she watched the blonde sleep soundly with a furrow in her brow, papers with her name and tag number scattered all over the place— their contents repeated in hushed, sleep-soaked whispers upon the slumbering woman’s lips— the other half of her mind won out. Instead of waking her with a jarring jab, she glided over and straddled the blonde’s waist, pressing her lips against still ones. It only took a moment for the taller woman to spring to life again and she remembers the look of surprise on her face so well.

It’s a far cry from the one that’s gazing down at her now, dark and hungry and possessive.

“Please,” Cosima whines, feeling hot lips and a teasing tongue at the hollow of her throat.

They don’t have much time. She’s supposed to meet Shay in just over an hour and she knows she’ll need to shower first before that happens. She shouldn’t have even allowed Delphine to bring her here in the first place, but the French woman had insisted on taking her in a bed— “the proper way.” Of course, the bed she shares with her girlfriend was out of the question so, in a company car, they’d driven all the way to Delphine’s condo and wasted no time in stripping each other down to their barest forms. Deft fingers slowly trail down her body to tease at the small patch of wiry hair and she shudders, her eyes clamping shut.

“Tell me what you want,” Delphine demands, her words a sticky whisper against her throat.

She’s panting now, moaning when she feels Delphine’s lips capture one of her nipples, though the doctor’s hand remains fixed in place, settled just above her sex and waiting for the order. Every time, it’s the same; she always asks, as if she’s unsure if she can really trust the brunette’s actions. Why should she, when the clone can’t even trust her own? Why should Delphine trust the arch in her spine or the wetness between her thighs, why should she trust all of the promises whispered to her in the veil of darkness when every time, she slithers away again— back to Shay, back to safety.

“You know,” she answers, her breath hitching when the very tips of Delphine’s fingers graze her, tracing her folds.

Cosima throws her head back and whimpers, her fingers biting into the doctor’s shoulders. How did they even get here in the first place? Things had been going so well with Shay. Things were _still_ going well with Shay, and that was the strange part. She thought she’d never find someone to fill the void Delphine had left and then the young masseuse came skipping into her life and everything changed. Things had moved fast, but it had been welcomed. She had an actual relationship, one that was built on trust, not one that stood unsteadily atop a precipice of lies that would undoubtedly topple over. She had everything she needed with Shay, so why did she find herself pressed beneath Delphine’s greedy and practiced touch with growing frequency?

“Tell me,” Delphine insists with a growl.

Tell her what? That this is a mistake? No. Somehow that doesn’t seem right. That she should be getting ready to meet her girlfriend for their six month anniversary dinner? No. Neither of them want to think about Shay right now. She settles for a breathy “fuck me,” instead. Delphine must accept her answer because her teasing fingers deliver, plunging deep into her tightness and ripping a satisfied groan from the Cosima’s throat.

She bucks against the doctor’s steady, thrusting hand, desperate for release. She can feel it building, feel herself nearing the edge and she eagerly anticipates the descent, waiting for Delphine to deliver her.  _Waiting for Delphine_ , who’d blown threw her life like a hurricane she just barely managed to survive. Waiting for Delphine— the category five— to tear through whatever she has left. She wonders if she’ll come back from this,  _if she wants to come back from this._ She keeps coming back here, after all; back to this space she can’t truly occupy but refuses to give up. She keeps coming back, as if she’s begging for disaster _._ Does Delphine sense it, too? Does she feel it in her clenching muscles, in the wetness that runs down her long, slender fingers? Does she sense how bad Cosima  _needs this?_

“Fuck me,” she whimpers again.

She clutches Delphine, holding her close as she hears a moan ripple in the back of the DYAD director’s throat. The blonde’s thrusts become more hurried, more forceful, and Cosima spreads herself wider to take them. She can feel the flush spread over her body and whimpers again, repeating herself over and over and over, the words bending and transforming and transitioning until she’s completely unaware of them.

_“Fuck me…”_

_“Fuck me…”_

_“Love me…”_

With a few more skillful strokes, she comes undone. She finds herself plunging, falling, dropping into an oblivion that looks an awful lot like a galaxy bursting into bloom. Once she’s able to blink the light show away and regain her laboured breaths, she sighs at the feel of Delphine’s gentle lips showering the side of her face with kisses.

_“Mon amour,”_ Delphine whispers, smiling.

And just like that, she’s crushed and uprooted all at the same time— she watches powerlessly as her roof is stripped away, shingle-by-shingle, as the beams begin to crack and break beneath the sheer force of it all.

“I-I have to go,” he stammers, rolling herself out from underneath the press of her lover.

She buzzes around the room, gathering her clothes and hastily pulling them back on. Delphine never moves from her position in bed, reclining on her stomach with her face buried in a pillow. Cosima tries her best not to glance over, tries not to take in the subtle jerk of the blonde’s shoulders while her face remains obstructed. She tries to swallow the ball in her throat and blink back the mist in her eyes. Shay is probably waiting for her, probably wondering where she is.

“I’m running late. She’s… she’s waiting for me.”

Delphine nods in understanding but never lifts her head, face still buried in the illusionary comfort of her pillow. Fully clothed again, Cosima hesitantly approaches the blonde, staring down at the pale and perfect pile that clutches the sheets beneath her. She reaches out, reaches towards the mess she’s made— the mess  _they’ve_ made together.

Before her hand touches skin, she reconsiders and reels it back in.


	11. Ellipsism (Cophinaphile)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ellipsism: A sadness that you’ll never be able to know how history will turn out.

“This cannot be right.” Delphine offered as they made their way along the winding walkway. Even though the branches were bare, tangled tree limbs blocked her view, rendering impossible the notion that such an iconic and massive monument might be mere meters away.

“Of course it’s right.” Cosima soothed her. “I’ve been here before.” She slotted her fingers between Delphine’s and squeezed reassuringly.  “It’s just up here.”

And as soon as the last word had slipped from Cosima’s lips, the tree line stopped, opening onto a field of green slashed through by an expansive wall of polished black granite.

“Merde.” Delphine whispered to herself; the solemnity of the site stopped her in her tracks; there were no words, no pictures, no effusive sentimentality that could have prepared her for the profound weight of the place.  They had been all over the US capital city. Everywhere they had ventured in DC had been populated, buzzing with life, and alive with laughter and activity. Here the crowds were no less dense, but the air was calm, the space silent.

“I know.” Cosima barely voiced the syllables, squeezing Delphine’s hand again. “Come on.”  

All along the length of the memorial, men and women stood. Still. Some in groups, some in isolation, some at a distance, some up close. Some took pictures, some made meticulous rubbings of the names of loved ones lost. Some were stoic, some wept openly, and still others simply stood, a hand or forehead pressed close to memory. Even the children, of whom there were many, embodied gravity.  

_Robert Lee Barrett Jr._   She hadn’t come seeking him, but here he was, at eyelevel at the time she herself began to feel it, the enormous weight of living in the presence of so many departed souls.  She turned to him, let her fingers run along the cold surface, feeling the shape of his name; a translucent vision of herself stared back, reflected in the glossy plain of the wall.  It was unsettling; the tangle of the tangible and the ethereal made it difficult to discern who here was real and who was a ghost.  Cosima squeezed her free hand again and they continued their walk.

As they moved toward the center of the memorial, she continued to let her eyes run over the interminable register of loss. So many letters. So many names. So many lives.  It was impossible not to mourn for them, for the lives denied them, for the world they would never see.

She had already passed it by the time she recognized it. She stopped dead in her tracks; she turned and took a step back. Her eyes scanned up and down, side to side, waiting to be drawn, captured by the sight again.  She had seen it as surely as if someone had called her name.  Or perhaps she hadn’t.  Perhaps it was the delusion of a romantic imagination, but then as she turned to continue their journey, she saw it. Waist high, seven letters in a field of millions.

They rooted her to the spot.

“What is it?” Cosima whispered to her.

“There.” Delphine pointed to the name in front of them.

“Mmmmm.” Cosima understood immediately.  “There’s a Niehaus, too.” She moved closer to her girlfriend. “Are you OK?”

“I am.”  the blonde answered, “it’s just….” She had no words to finish the sentence.

“I know.” Cosima said, and it was true.

They stood then together for a moment; until Delphine reached into her pocket and took out her phone. She focused her camera on the name  _Willis Cormier_ and snapped a picture before wiping a tear from her cheek and turning to the brunette whose arm was woven through her own.

“Shall we?” she asked.  Cosima smiled and nodded her head. They turned toward the east and walked on, the sun setting at their backs.


	12. Kuebiko (clonesanity)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kuebiko: A state of exhaustion inspired by acts of senseless violence.

Cosima and Shay hiked back toward camp under a cotton-candy sky of vibrant pinks and purples.  Their laughter could be heard echoing through the undergrowth, sending birds and chipmunks scurrying away.  The sun dropped low and the sky was fading to black just as Cosima and Shay emerged from the woods beside their campsite.

“That hike was just what I needed, I think,” Cosima panted. “It’s so nice to get away from all the clone drama and just exist in nature for a while.”

Cosima meant it. Being at home in the loft or in the lab was too painful. Even Shay’s apartment, which had once been a refuge, was tainted by the memory of Delphine’s presence. She couldn’t be there in that space with that bathtub without being reminded of the fierceness which Delphine had shown on her behalf.

Now that Delphine had left her, again, she didn’t want to be reminded. Remembering was too painful and filled her with regret over the things she should have said.  Regret over all the times she should have trusted Delphine and the million other things she should have done differently. A few simple words might have changed everything.

There was nothing left to do now except try to put it out of her mind, and getting away for a few days was the best she could do. But even here, surrounded by nature’s beauty, she couldn’t stop unanswerable questions from swirling to the front of her mind whenever there was a break in conversation. _Why did she leave? Is she okay? Why didn’t she talk to me about any of this?_

Cosima felt a growing dread as her calls and texts went unanswered for weeks. Nobody at Dyad would answer any of her questions about Dr. Cormier since Cosima had resigned.  None of the local hospitals she called had records of Delphine, and the police were not interested in pursuing her disappearance without evidence of foul play. Sometimes the despair threatened to overtake her as she contemplated hypothetical scenarios: Delphine kidnapped, Delphine injured, Delphine laid out in a morgue.

Right now she just needed to forget, and Shay was perfect for that. Moments like this–sweating outside under the open sky with a beautiful girl looking at her with desire–such times were the only times she didn’t feel as if the void Delphine left in her life was going to grow and grow until her entire universe was consumed in sorrow and worry. Cosima was suffocating, and Shay provided her the tiniest breath of oxygen. It was enough to continue on, for now.  

She allowed herself the comfort of Shay’s companionship because it seemed to be what Delphine had intended.

Cosima unscrewed the lid of her red Nalgene and gulped down several mouthfuls of water. Excess liquid spilled over the wide mouth of the bottle and ran down her chin and neck, mixing with her sweat. She held out the bottle to her girlfriend with a smile, and Shay stared skeptically at the container.  

“Are you sure this is BPA-free?”

“C’mon. Don’t give me that. It’s my favorite bottle and I’ve had it forever.”  

“If you’ve had it for long then it’s definitely not BPA-free. The toxin-free versions were only introduced a year or two ago.  During all of your sciencing have you ever considered how chemicals leached from plastic might be contributing to your illness?”

“That’s just ridiculous and you know it. Besides, I know you’re thirsty as shit after that hike.”

The flirting. Flirting was easy for her, even now.

Shay noticed a bead of water resting on Cosima’s chin from where it had spilled just a moment before.

“Mmmmm, yes.” Shay moved forward as if to accept the bottle, but instead of taking it she slid into a loose embrace with the dreadlocked girl.  Shay wrapped her arms around Cosima’s shoulders and brought their foreheads together, rocking them gently to a silent song.  Then in her most seductive voice, she cooed, “I  _am_  thirsty.”

Shay stuck out her tongue and captured the bead of water just as it began to break and roll down Cosima’s neck. She pushed the clone against the nearby car and began to kiss a trail along the line of Cosima’s jaw to where the moisture tasted more of salt and sweat.

Cosima shook with gentle laughter at this maneuver, and though she wanted to reciprocate she recognized that it wasn’t quite the right time.

“Later, later,” Cosima said breathlessly as she pushed Shay away. “If we don’t take care of our camp logistics before we lose the last of the sun, we’ll be sorry.”

“I am already sorry.” Shay pursed her lips into an exaggerated pout.

Cosima gave Shay a look to acknowledge the blonde’s adorable entreaties but shifted down to business when she opened her mouth to reply.

“This camp won’t set itself up, you know. And I want to make you a campfire; it’s not camping if you don’t make a fire. I even brought stuff for s’mores.”

Shay was not ready to give up on her advances.  “There are so many better things I can think of for you to eat on this trip.”

Cosima deflected by pulling the s’more fixings out of the car.

“How have you never had a s’more, dude? Look at this stuff. You know they taste amazing.”

“I’m usually very careful about the things I put into my body.  But if you think it’s essential, I’m willing to try anything once.”

Cosima raised an eyebrow. “Yeah? Well it’s settled then. I’ll get the fire going while you put up the tent. Sound good?”

“Tent. Yes. I like the sound of that.”

Shay went to the blue Bug and dug through their supplies to find Cosima’s tent and tent poles.  As she unrolled the tent body it became apparent that it would be a tight squeeze for them both with their stuff, not that she minded.  She threaded the poles into place and saw that the tent had probably been red originally but was now faded to a salmon-pink after many days of use in the sun.  She wondered absently about who else had spent time in that little envelope of nylon with Cosima, but shrugged it off.  Cosima was hers now.

After a few a few more trips to the car, Shay disappeared into the tent with her all of their sleeping gear.  First she unrolled the foam pads and flopped down to check that the ground was as level as it had looked from the outside.  Satisfied with that, she pulled the sleeping bags from their stuff sacks and arranged them so that the zippers would both open toward the center of the tent.

By the time Shay emerged, Cosima was carefully constructing a  teepee from dried twigs and branches over a small pile of fine tinder.

“Is that really part of it?” Shay asked as she set up a folding camping chair.

“It totally is. I mean, some people like the log cabin method because it’s faster and easier to stack branches like Lincoln Logs. But my dad always did the teepee method.  Said it makes a more even set of starter coals. Some things are worth taking the time to get right.”

Cosima pulled a lighter from her pocket and after a few flicks it sputtered to life. She held a rolled kleenex tissue in the flame, then poked it through a small door in the twig teepee.  The tinder erupted into light and the bigger kindling caught quickly. Cosima tended this small conflagration like her life depended on it, feeding it a steady supply of larger and larger sticks and branches. Finally she laid on one of the split logs they’d bought at the ranger station and breathed a sigh of relief when it caught.

Shay watched all this ceremony in silence from a camping chair she had set up by the fireside.  By the time the flames were roaring, the last of the sun had disappeared behind the trees.  Cosima’s face was lit with an orange flickering glow, and her toothy self-satisfied grin was glinting in the light.  

“Pretty great, huh?  This is something humans have been doing together for tens of thousands of years.”

“I am impressed, actually. So, now we make s'mores?”  Shay pulled out the bag of jet-puffed marshmallows.  Her mind was still in the tent, in the sleeping bags.  The love nest.

“Woah, woah. Not so fast.  There’s a protocol here! You can’t just throw a marshmallow over a brand new fire and expect to get great results.”

“I  _don’t_  expect great results.”

“Humor me, please.  I don’t like to do things halfway.”  Cosima took the marshmallows out of Shay’s hands and stuffed them back into the food box. She brought out a bottle of red and offered a glass to Shay instead.

“Besides, you know that even the best treats are improved with anticipation.”

Shay shifted slightly in her chair, aroused by the suggestion. “Fine.  So now what?”

“Now we talk.”

Cosima was burning with questions about what Delphine had said when she visited Shay, but she knew that they would not be well-received.  Shay did not like talking about Cosima’s “psycho ex.”  So for now, at least, Cosima had decided to accept that whatever Delphine’s reason for leaving, she had clearly intended for Shay and Cosima to be together.  The DYAD business card with her tag number was incontrovertible proof of that.

Cosima cast about in her mind for something neutral to talk about. She smiled when she noticed how perfect the sky was for stargazing. It was fully dark out there in the wilderness, the moon wasn’t out yet, and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Her astronomy geekiness had always served her well on past camping trips.

“What’s your favorite constellation?“

"Constellation?” Shay wasn’t sure where Cosima was going with this line of questioning.  "It might surprise you to know that I’m not into stupid astrology shit….  I just made that up for my profile.” Shay laughed.

“You don’t need to be into astrology to like stars. They’re cool.“

Shay looked up at the sky for her answer. "The Big Dipper, I guess. Isn’t that it there? Pointing toward the North Star that kids say you can follow home?”

Cosima followed her gaze up. “Ursa Major. Yeah, that’s a great one. Do you know the story?”

“No. But now who’s the one into astrology?”

“It’s mythology, not astrology. Ursa Major is the great bear. There was a beautiful nymph that Zeus loved. Callisto, I think, was her name.” The fire popped, and Cosima hugged her shoulders while she tried to remember the details. “Callisto lived among the nymphs attending Artemis, the virgin goddess of the moon and the hunt. Followers of Artemis were bound by oath to remain celibate, so Artemis became enraged when she learned that Callisto had gotten it on with Zeus. Callisto was transformed into a bear and Artemis shot her with a silver bow. And when Zeus learned that Callisto had been mortally wounded, he saved her by placing her in the sky where he could always see her.”

The snarky grin on Shay’s face melted into a solemn expression. Cosima did not know why, but Shay seemed moved by this unexpected information.

“Shot with a silver bow.” Shay quietly repeated the detail back to herself, letting the words sink in. “It’s interesting that people do such terrible things out of jealousy, even in the old stories.”

“Yes,” Cosima agreed and let her thoughts drift. It was interesting. She imagined Delphine holding a razor blade, ready to cut Shay, and she wondered how much of that had been motivated by jealousy.

Shay spoke and interrupted Cosima’s Delphine fantasy.  "The last part of your story reminds me of Pablo Nerudo.  _The night is full of stars and she is not with me._ “

Cosima rolled her eyes.

"You really like his poems, huh?” Cosima teased gently, remembering how Shay had reeled her in the first time with a different Neruda quote. Loving is short, forgetting is long. Dropping a Neruda line had seemed very smooth then, but she’d done it enough now that the novelty was wearing thin.  

“Yes! I told you that you should read them. Especially the sad ones. They’re all about sorrow over the loss of a love that is elemental. Cosmic. Pit-of-the-soul. He constantly associates it with the stars and wind and nature. And even though she’s left him, whoever she is, it’s like their love will always be.” Shay paused and looked intently at Cosima with big shining eyes while she gathered the courage to continue. “I hope… I hope that someday somebody will love me like that.”

Cosima was nowhere near ready to address that last comment, so she broke their gaze and turned back to the sky to look for other interesting celestial features.  Cosima’s eyes came to rest on the moon just beginning to rise, a waning gibbous about three-quarters full. She felt wistful as she allowed herself to wonder if somewhere out there Delphine might be looking at the moon too.

*******

Nearby, a lone grizzly foraged in the moonlight. The bear worked silently, the occasional broken twig the only sign of its presence. With deft paws, the bear passed from one bush to the next stripping fruits from every plant in the glade.

Then a strong breeze came whistling through the trees, shaking the leaves and filling the air with sound.  The bear, startled, looked up and its gaze fell on a pale circle of light in the sky.  Its eyes lingered there, and it relaxed at the sight.

*******

Cosima and Shay were well into their wine bottle by now.  Cosima threw the final log onto the fire before regaining her seat.

“Do you remember before when you told me you think people can come back from the edge of death, sometimes, if their love is strong enough? Did you mean that?”

“I did. I still believe that.”

“Do you think people come back in other ways? Like reincarnation?”

“I hope so. I think so. The good ones do.  Or the ones with a good reason. Whatever the rules are, life is just a circle and it keeps rolling on.”  

Rolling on. That’s what Cosima had been trying to do for the last several weeks since Delphine had left her and disappeared without a trace. Cosima went silent as her thoughts drifted away. She remembered the pressure of Delphine’s insistent hands, full of want, pulling her into a moment’s desperate kiss before pushing her away again.

“You’re doing that thing again.”

“What thing?”

“Thinking about her.”

Cosima didn’t want to lie, so she opted to remain silent.

After a moment Shay said, “Let me ask you something.” Her irritation was showing through despite her efforts to conceal it.

“Okay.”

“What is your biggest fear?”

Cosima took a large swallow of her wine. She was afraid of many things.

”I dunno…. The same as everyone else.“

Shay did not seem satisfied with that answer, and Cosima shifted uncomfortably in her seat.  The conversation suddenly felt deadly serious.  

"Losing people, I guess… And being lost.”

“Our fears say a lot about us.”

Cosima did not like this turn of conversation. It reminded her how much Shay still didn’t get about her, even after everything she’d revealed about herself and her sisters over the last few weeks. It reminded her of how much she was holding back, and of how there would always be secrets between them.

“What do  _you_  fear?” Cosima instinctively threw the question back as a defensive tactic. If it was hard for her to answer, it should be just as hard for Shay.

But it wasn’t hard for Shay to answer. She looked down and answered without hesitation, “Never being enough for other people.”

Cosima already knew she was being a selfish asshole for getting involved with Shay while Delphine still occupied so much of her headspace.  But she felt she wasn’t strong enough to face the void alone. She needed somebody, anybody, to cling to in that darkness. And Shay was it.

*******

When the wind subsided, the bear drew itself up to full height on two hind legs and stretched its arms overhead.  It held one paw up to its face and stared as if discovering its body for the first time.  Then it dropped into a more comfortable posture to check out the right side of its torso. All good.

The bear blinked and flared its nostrils before sucking a deep breath into its powerful snout.

A sweet and familiar scent lit up the pleasure centers of the bear’s brain. Something like honey mixed with smoke brought feelings from another life flooding back.

The beast turned and loped downhill and into the wind, toward the source.

*******

Cosima refilled her wine glass as she decided to try to steer the conversation back into lighter topics.

“What would you want to reincarnate as? If you had a choice?”

“I don’t think we get a choice. But if we did, I guess… a fox.”

“You are already a fox! My foxy lady…”  A grin spread across Shay’s face, and Cosima relaxed again with the knowledge she’d righted the ship. Blatant flirting felt easy and safe.

Cosima was beginning to feel the heat of the alcohol creep into her face.  She slipped her hand into Shay’s and squeezed. Shay would never fill the void left by Delphine, but Cosima still cared about her.

"I really believe that whatever is meant to be… will be,” Shay said as she stroked the back of Cosima’s hand. Shay looked over toward the tent and licked her lips. “This fire looks about done, don’t you think? Bedtime?“

"No way, dude. I mean, I dig your thinking. But the fire is just getting good now.”

Cosima withdrew her hand and was kneeling again by the fire ring, breaking open the last log with the point of her stick to expose the hot orange coals inside it to the open air. Embers flew as Cosima raked them out into an even bed, and the new coals hissed and popped.

“Now, you’re a grown woman and can make your own choices.  But what I recommend is that you put one marshmallow on your stick and cook it rotisserie-style from a safe height. As long as you are patient and keep turning, you can’t go wrong: golden brown on the outside, gooey deliciousness on the inside.”

Cosima demonstrated by pushing a marshmallow onto her stick and holding it level a few inches above the coals.

“Oh, no!” Shay exclaimed in faux-disappointment.  "Can’t I do two at once?”

“First you didn’t want any at all and now you want two?”

“I don’t do things halfway, either.” Shay smiled.

“Well, it’s a risky strategy.“ Cosima leaned over to plant a chaste kiss on Shay’s cheek. "I speak from experience when I say it’s hard to get… even cooking without the ability to focus on one thing.”

"I’ll take my chances, I think. What’s the worst that could happen?” Shay pushed two marshmallows onto her roasting stick and held them out over the coals.

Cosima quickly slipped into the meditative zen of trying to get a perfectly even brown on her marshmallow. She found the flicker and heat of the coals hypnotic and relaxing. Hers was just beginning to show signs of darkening, and it seemed like she was on track to produce one of the best results she’d ever had.  

Shay was not as patient. After a few minutes of little visible change in her marshmallows she shifted hers down closer to the flames to speed up the process.  Cosima saw this and voiced her disapproval.

“Woah, that’s against protocol! I’m telling you, you’re going to burn it.”

“Sometimes I like to play things by ear.” Shay said this as she drained her third glass of the evening and set it down beside her.

“Well don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

It wasn’t a surprise when Shay’s marshmallows ignited, the promise of her indulgent gooey treat instantly transforming into a molten black firebomb of missed opportunities.

“No, no, no, no, no!” Shay waved her stick around animatedly in a drunken attempt to try to blow out her burning marshmallows.

“Shay, no, stop!”

But it was too late. The force of Shay’s sudden movements had flung the softened marshmallow from the spit and into the air towards her face.  The flaming blob stuck to Shay’s neck where it continued to burn.

For a split second Cosima was confused about what had happened.  Then screaming. The smell of singed hair.  The rising blisters of the third-degree burns spreading over the skin of Shay’s neck.  Every sense was assaulting Cosima with a horrific new reality.

Cosima doused the flaming marshmallow with the remaining contents of her wine glass. The burning marshmallow went out leaving its black ashy remnants stuck on Shay’s pale skin.  But Shay was still screaming and Cosima quickly realized the molten interior of the marshmallow was still cooking her skin.  Cosima grabbed a handful of napkins and frantically tried to clear away the gooey sugar mess but succeeded mostly in spreading the sticky substance over an even larger area.

“Holy FUCK. This shit is like napalm!!”

As the shock wore off, Shay’s screams softened into muffled whimpering. “Please. Please get it off of me.”

“I’m sorry, I’m trying, but it’s stuck. It’s stuck on you.”  As Cosima grabbed and pulled away at the marshmallow goo, the blackened crust split open revealing a soft interior that stretched into long strands like melty cheese on pizza.

Cosima continued cleaning the burn area as best she could until, suddenly, Shay went rigid and silent.

“That’s most of it, I think,” Cosima said before Shay tried to shush her by pressing a trembling finger to her lips.

While this drama had been unfolding, a bear had walked into their camp unnoticed.  Now it sniffed the air and let out a roar, causing Cosima to jump and turn.  Cosima took a few steps back from the fire but Shay was riveted to the spot where she’d been kneeling.

The bear reared up on hind legs and stretched to its full height. Illuminated by flame, it struck an imposing figure against the night sky.  It walked less steadily in this upright posture, but its slow inexorable approach was enough to terrify both women.  The bear seemed to grow taller and taller as it approached until it reached Shay and dropped to her eye level.  By now, Shay was shaking violently in fear but seemed unable to do or say anything in her defense.

Cosima saw Shay grimace as the bear sniffed and licked the sticky marshmallow wound on her neck.  At first the bear approached this task languidly, seeming to relish the pain and fear it was inflicting on the tiny blonde.  Then it became more greedy and animated, whipped into a frenzy by the taste.  It continued without regard to the pain searing across Shay’s tender burned skin.

Shay cried out again as the bear’s licking turned to gnawing and pinching.

“Cosima… what’s happening?!”

Shay’s voice quavered as she reached for the clone.  Cosima tried to hold her gaze but looked away as the bear’s hateful teeth sunk deep into the flesh of Shay’s neck.  Shay collapsed to the ground with the bear on top of her grunting and tearing at her flesh, splattering Cosima with a spray of blood.

There was nothing Cosima could do. She knew she should run and save herself, but something possessed her as she listened to Shay’s cries go silent. She would not abandon Shay the way she had been abandoned.  She steeled herself for the consequences, then landed a firm kick on the bear’s right side.  

Her blow startled the animal out of its feeding frenzy.  It whimpered loudly and fled into darkness.

Shay lay motionless in a growing puddle of gore. Cosima dropped to her knees and clutched at the slick folds of Shay’s sweater, hot and red with the blood of her torn open throat.  Cosima gathered the tiny blonde into her arms, but saw no sign of life.  Several beats passed in stillness and Cosima was sure that Shay was gone.

Cosima was in shock about everything that had just happened.  Moments ago she had been having a fun evening, and now this.  

Was this really happening? She couldn’t make sense of how she had come to be alone, again.  After her near-death experience she had begun to believe in a higher power, but now that power seemed fickle and cruel.  She looked up at the sky and cursed the unnameable being or beings controlling her fate. What kind of sadists would let this happen to her, again?

But then Cosima heard a low gurgling sound coming from the body in her arms.  She looked down as Shay blinked, weakly.  When Cosima strained she could just make out the soft whistle of Shay’s labored breathing. Cosima cupped the wound in a futile attempt to control the bleeding, but crimson still flowed freely through her fingers.

“Shay? Can you hear me?” A tear rolled down Cosima’s face. Her hand left a bloody thumbprint on Shay’s cheek as she tried to comfort the dying girl.

“Sorry… for… Delphine.” Shay was choking these words out, fresh flecks of blood staining her lips with each syllable.  “She… I…” she struggled, each syllable more difficult than the last. “…had to.”

“What? You had to what?!” Cosima drew her hand back.

Cosima waited for her answer for what seemed an eternity, but none came. Just terrible silence.

“Please. Don’t leave me,” Cosima whispered. “Please.”

Silence.

And then, finally, more gurgling, like Shay was trying to speak again even as she drowned in her own blood.  

“Sss-sorry,” Shay choked out, barely above a whisper, as she turned her eyes from Cosima toward the sky. Her focus softened and faded as the light went out of her.

Cosima laid Shay’s body down gently and crawled away.  She crawled around to the other side of the fire pit and hugged her knees up to her chest.  The tears were flowing freely now.  She raised her hand to wipe them away, but realized in time that her hand was still covered in Shay’s vital fluid.

Shay. Dead. And did Shay do something to Delphine?  What was she talking about?  It was all too much to contemplate.  None of it made any sense. Cosima tried to focus on the feeling of the fire’s heat at her back to the exclusion of everything else. She was too exhausted to do anything else.

Heat. Life. One breath, then two. In. Out. Eventually her pulse began to stabilize.

Then Cosima heard the pop of a twig, giving her a renewed jolt of adrenaline.  She peered out into the night and saw shining eyes staring back from the edge of the darkness.  The bear had not left, after all; it was watching her from a few meters away.

Cosima froze.

“Get out! Go!” Bitter words were all she could summon in her attempt to drive the bear away this time.

But the bear did not go.  It hesitated before stepping closer and bringing its red-stained muzzle to Cosima’s hand, which was still sticky with a dark mixture of blood and wine and marshmallow — the very mixture it had just killed Shay over.

A part of her lacked the energy or will to flee.  Delphine had left her, again. The thing she had come back for was gone. And now Shay was…. Shay was…. it was too much to even think about.

She sighed and hoped it would be over quickly.

Cosima closed her eyes and said a silent prayer to the universe.  She contemplated the atoms of her body dissolving back into the vast reservoirs of the cosmos to be recombined with the atoms of others, again and again, forever.  Spiral shells and dandelions in bloom: these were her past and her future.

She felt the bear’s tongue, hot and firm, against her palm.  With a surprising gentleness, it licked each trembling finger until all the blood and marshmallow was gone.  Then it pulled away and sat quietly, waiting for Cosima to open her eyes.

When Cosima finally did, she thought she saw something familiar looking back at her.  Though her rational mind balked, the bear was holding her gaze with unmistakeable eyes.  Their brown pools shined with the same tenderness and sorrow that she saw every night in her dreams.  These were the same infinite eyes telling her  _I’m sorry, I can’t stay_. Cosima’s lip trembled as she allowed her deepest fears to supply meaning and identity to the being before her.

“How…?”

The bear gave a mournful howl and shook its head toward Shay’s broken body.

“No!” Cosima dropped to her knees and let out a strangled sob. The bear regarded her for a moment more, then turned and lumbered off into the night.

A breeze rustled the leaves of the trees and the last of the fire went out.  The moon was gone, too, and Cosima shivered in the dark.  But the Big Dipper still glittered overhead, pointing the way home.


	13. Adronitis (mveloc)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adronitis: Frustration with how long it takes to get to know someone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is set somewhere in the canon universe, though I’m not entirely sure where it would fit in (sometime after 2x08 but before 3x01, obviously). Let’s just call it a brief, fluffy lapse in the Cophine shit show and not dwell on it too much ;)

“What’s your favourite colour?”

The blonde looks away from her computer monitor momentarily, shooting the inquiring clone a questioning glance from her work station. Cosima is staring, palm resting on her cheek with her arm propped up on the desk as she waits for the doctor to answer her with wide, curious eyes that sparkle behind the thickness of her frames.

_“Pardon?”_

They’ve been busy working for the past several hours, both relatively immersed with the science in front of them. Cosima’s been unusually quiet, save for the occasional hum or comment she mumbles under her breath as she switches the slide under her microscope, but her question breaks the easy silence the two had fallen into and Delphine can’t help but wonder what prompted it.

“I bet it’s something really specific— like, not  _just_ purple, but, like, lilac or lavender or some other dumb flower,” Cosima muses, more to herself than to her lover.

The corners of Delphine’s lips upturn ever-so-slightly, the French woman unable to hide her amused smirk. Cosima is still staring at her with a fixed gaze, still resting the side of her face in the palm of her hand like a daydreaming schoolchild staring at the window and into a world full of so many possibilities.

“What are you going on about?” she asks again.

She has no idea where this sudden curiosity is coming from. Sure, Cosima’s always been a curious individual, but why such a random and trivial question? What was the point in asking it? She simply can’t wrap her mind around Cosima’s thought process, but then, that’s one of the things she loves about the clone.

“You wear a lot of white, though,” Cosima remarks, disregarding Delphine’s own question and taking note of her blouse that’s concealed beneath the crispness of her lab coat. “But white’s not technically a colour, so I guess that doesn’t count…”

“Cosima,” Delphine says, addressing the brunette directly. “Why does this matter?”

The blonde laughs, but when her laughter fails to radiate and she notices the look of soberness on her girlfriend’s face, her smile drops. Cosima narrows her eyes in her direction, silently considering her lover while Delphine tugs her lower lip between her teeth out of habit, uncertain of how to handle or what to make of such gentle yet intense scrutiny.

“I realized something,” Cosima begins.

“Hm?”

“When I was reading your file,” she adds for clarification.

Delphine stands, abandoning her work to cross the small space between them. She leans against Cosima’s desk, staring down at the shorter woman, unable to mask her confusion. She was previously unaware that Cosima had accessed her file and she doesn’t know if she should feel angry or insulted or amused by the confession. Cosima leans all the way back in her chair until it strains and squeaks so she can stare up at the towering doctor.

“You read my file?”

“Yeah,” the brunette admits “I was pissed off at you and looking for something I could use against you, but I couldn’t really find anything.”

“That’s… good?” Delphine replies, uncertain of how to answer.

Cosima grows silent for another moment, her lips a thin, straight line.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were born in Lille? I thought you were from Paris.”

She blinks, caught off guard once again by Cosima’s strange line of questioning that flows without preamble.

“I moved to Paris when I was young,” she answers with a shrug. “I was… three or four, maybe?”

“How come I don’t know that?”

She would laugh again, but she can tell from the tone of Cosima’s voice and the way her eyes flicker that she’s upset. It isn’t the same as the roaring thunder that erupts from her every time the European finds herself ejected from a room at her lover’s demand, but it’s still just as painful in a way.

“You know everything about me. I mean, you literally have log books that are filled with j _ust me_. How come I didn’t know you were born in Lille?” she presses. “How come I don’t know what your favourite colour is or if you’ve ever broken any bones or if you had any pets growing up? I’m your girlfriend, right? We’ve been through so much shit, how come I don’t know—”

“I had a dog. His name was Pepin,” she speaks, swooping in to cut Cosima off before she has a chance to start on a tangent. “He was… erm… I’m not really good with dog types. But he had soft, floppy ears and very big eyes. He was golden.”

Cosima stops for a moment and allows herself to process the new information she’s been awarded. She’s never certain with Delphine, there’s always the chance that this could be yet another lie, yet another fabrication like the foreign, meek grad student she initially fell in love with, some sort of tale spun with the sole purpose of gaining her trust and winning her love. However, as she searches the blonde’s expression, she’s very easily able to discern the truth and as soon as she does, she can’t contain her grin, its very presence enough to draw out a twin upon her lover’s face.

“A dog? Really?” she asks, almost impressed. “I always pictured you as a cat person.”

Delphine shakes her head to express her distain.

“My grandmother had a cat. It was awful,” she explains, frowning at the very memory of the creature. “Every time we would visit her, I would try to pet it and it would hiss and scratch at me.”

“Yeah, cats can be douchebags,” Cosima agrees.

“I got an infection once from when it scratched me and it made me very sick. I’ve never broken any bones, but I had to go to the hospital for that. I was happy when that thing died.”

Cosima reaches for her hand, threading their fingers together with an ever-growing smile, laughing softly. Delphine traces soothing patterns with her thumb as she watches Cosima’s tongue faintly poke out from behind her teeth like it does when she’s feeling mischievous or amused.

“I hate horses,” Cosima confesses.

“Really? How can you hate horses?” Delphine counters, bewildered.

“Got bit by one at a petting zoo when I was four. Now I get nervous whenever I see one,” she elaborates.

Delphine nods. If she can hate cats, surely Cosima is allowed her hatred of the Equus variety. She smiles down at her lover once again, tenderly stroking her cheek before planting a soft kiss upon a set of lips that are all too ready and willing to receive her. With Cosima’s curiosity finally satisfied, she returns to her own desk and attempts to delve back into her work, only she finds her focus still lingering with her tiny lover and her words. Does Cosima really feel that way? Does she really feel like she doesn’t know anything about her? Sure, there’s been a lot of lies and in terms of time, they haven’t really been dating for so long, but so much has happened between them. Does Cosima still regard her as a stranger? She runs a hand through her curls, unable to contain herself.

“I had a horse.”

Cosima stops whatever it is she’s doing, spinning around in her chair to face Delphine. Delphine spins around in her own chair to receive her with a glance of her own. Cosima’s eyes sparkle in their amusement, her smirk crooked and well-placed.

“Of course you did,” she laughs.

“He was sweet. Very gentle, easy to ride. He would never bite,” she recalls, finding her own smile as images of her childhood friend come pouring back into her head.

“And did you ride him in the summers when you were home from boarding school?” the cocky brunette pries, leaning back in her chair and stretching her arms high above her head in a bid to straighten her spine.

“ _Oui,_ ” she nods. “We would spend the summers in the countryside, at the farm. My mother would make me tend to the stables and I— why are you laughing?”

It’s impossible to ignore the brunette’s fit of giggles and she arches a brow in Cosima’s direction, waiting for an explanation.

“Nothing,” Cosima replies, waving her hand dismissively as she wipes at the tears that are building in the corners of her eyes.

She suddenly realizes that Cosima is teasing her. She frowns, folding her arms over her chest, head dropping slightly.

“You’re making fun of me,” she mutters with a pout.

“I’m not!” Cosima insists.

Delphine spins her chair back around, abandoning their conversation so she can return to her work. Cosima calls out to her, trying to pull her back in, but she shakes her head and ignores her bratty girlfriend’s voice. She can’t, however, ignore the feeling of Cosima’s cheek pressed against her own as the clone saunters over to her work station and rests her chin upon the blonde’s shoulder.

“You’re cute when you pout,” she whispers, turning her head so she can press a kiss to Delphine’s cheek.

“Leave me.”

“Oh, come on. Don’t be a grump,” Cosima laughs again.

“I’m not a grump. I just don’t like being teased,” Delphine retorts, shrugging Cosima off.

She stands, stalking over to the chill zone and collapsing on the couch in a bid to put more distance between herself and Cosima. The brunette doesn’t take the hint, following her girlfriend all the way over. She plops down next to Delphine with a wide, toothy grin— the one she knows the doctor can never deny.

“I’m not teasing you!” she insists, sprawling out until her head is perched in Delphine’s lap.

Delphine finally looks down, drinking in Cosima’s smile, the warmth in her eyes. Cosima reaches for her hand, bringing it to the side of her face and Delphine’s thumb instinctively brushes over her cheek, cupping the softness.

“Really?” she skeptically asks.

Cosima falters for a moment.

“Okay, maybe a little bit,” she admits. “But it’s just… well, since you never talk about your childhood or your life before you met me or anything, I sort of… made one up or you.”

Delphine smiles again, slightly confused but nevertheless intrigued by her lover’s confession. She wonders just what kind of life Cosima has built for her in her mind.

“I’m not trying to make fun of you or anything, I swear.”

“Let’s hear it.”

Cosima sits up so that the two of them are level, her own confusion settling in.

“What?”

“Your version of my childhood,” Delphine says. “Let’s hear it.”

She waits patiently for Cosima to oblige her. The brunette wonders if she’s being serious, taking a moment to gauge Delphine’s reaction, to determine whether or not she’s walking into a trap that will land her in the doghouse. When she comes to the conclusion that she’s safe, she grins.

“Okay,” she nods, preparing to delve into her story. “Well, your parents sent you away to some super bougie private school where you were, like, obviously the totally hot genius girl.”

Delphine laughs at Cosima’s fair assessment. She can’t deny it, her parents  _had_ shipped her away to boarding school when she was young and she was always at the top of her class, although she doesn’t have the heart to interrupt her lover to tell her that she was actually quite awkward as a youth. Her signature curls were nothing more than a frizzy mess at the time, her limbs much too long for the body she’d yet to grow into.

“I’m right, aren’t I?”

Delphine chuckles lightly, opening her arms and drawing Cosima back into the safety and comfort of her lap once again. She toys with her lover’s dreads as Cosima looks up at her and continues to weave through her tale, the elaborate history of Delphine Cormier that she’s thrown together in her mind, born out of the pure frustration of her ignorance and an overactive imagination. The blonde grins and nods along the entire time, amused by Cosima’s assessment of herself. Even when she gets certain details wrong, Delphine doesn’t have the heart to correct her, more fascinated by the woman that’s reclining in her lap and the intricacies she spits from that wonderful brain of hers rather than the actual truth.

_This_ is her truth now.

It’s far better than horses and cat scratches and lilacs and lavenders, than frizzy hair and lanky limbs and a school she dominated but never quite fit into. This is a truth that she can hold in her hands, one that she can cuddle up to and wrap herself in at night to keep the howling wind at bay.


	14. Nodus Tollens (otp324B21)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nodus Tollens: The realization that the plot of your life doesn’t make sense to you anymore.

Sitting on the soft rug with her legs folded under her, Delphine tapped her pen on the surface of the coffee table, the string of the hoodie she wore between her teeth as she read through the latest lab results. She had planned on going to the gym but had gotten lost looking through paperwork. She didn’t know how long she had been sitting there, just that she had barely gotten through the few days of lab results.

Cosima wasn’t getting any better. The stem treatment from Kira’s tooth had just halted everything. She wasn’t getting any worse, but she wasn’t improving either. She just knew she was missing something. She knew she couldn’t get any information from Rachel and Leekie was being suspiciously withholding as well. The autopsy of Jennifer’s body had left more questions than answers. What were they going to do? They needed to find a cure for Cosima. She couldn’t bear the thought of losing the brunette. As if knowing Delphine was thinking about her, the sound of keys scratched against the door before it opened, Cosima’s arms loaded with bags. “Merde.” Delphine pushed herself up to assist, only to have Cosima twist away.

“Mphmmphmuumm” Cosima tried to speak, her mouth full of what looked like the mail.

Delphine laughed, grabbing the small stack of envelopes, rolling her eyes at the obvious teeth mark on the envelopes. “You salivated all over the power bill.” She commented, giving the brunette a wry look.

“Hi, Cosima! Thanks for bringing up the mail, Cosima!” Cosima commented as she began tucking some of the groceries in the fridge. “Thanks for buying groceries, Cosima.”

“You are only buying groceries because you ate all the food.” Delphine captured the brunette around the waist, bringing her in for a quick kiss. “How are you feeling?”

Rolling her eyes, Cosima pulled away. “I’m fine, Delphine. You don’t have to keep mothering me.” She returned to putting the groceries away. “I think I saw a card in the stack?”

“Hmmm?” Delphine picked up the stack, removing the bright yellow envelope from the stack, the Paris postage stamp making her pause. It couldn’t be…“Hey, what is the date today?” She knew it was December, but it didn’t seem like…

“It’s the 18th…December… 2013.” Cosima gave her a look.

“Oh.” Delphine sat down on one of the stools and leaned back against the prep counter, easily opening the flap and slipping the card from it. For our daughter on her birthday. Delphine’s brows furrowed as a photograph slipped out, a painting she’d seen many times, once a year for the past 20 years at least. Flipping over the photo, her mother’s handwriting was scribbled across the back in French.

“Can I see?” Cosima asked curiously, looking closely at the photo. “Is this da Vinci?” Flipping it over, she pursed her lips before looking at Delphine.

“It says ‘ _A little tradition from home_.’” Delphine accepted the photo back. “My birthday was always during the winter break of school so it was one of the few times I was home. My parents were always busy, but we had one tradition that was even more important than Christmas.” Moving to the fridge, she pinned the photo there with a magnet. “On my birthday, we would go to the Lourve and choose a section to walk through, but we would always swing by this painting, The Annunciation, which was my favorite.”

Cosima looked closer at the picture, her eyebrows furrowing. “Why this one?”

“Because it’s a fake.” Delphine laughed at Cosima’s wide-eyed expression. “Well, supposedly it’s a fake. There are two versions of this painting, one in France, one in Italy. Experts first said that Leonardo da Vinci painted both, then they said that the one in the Lourve is not da Vinci, and it was painted 10 years later, but there is no proof either way. No one watched da Vinci paint either. ”

Cosima removed a bottle of wine from the holder, expertly removing the cork and pouring two glasses. “So, one is painted by da Vinci and the other is a copy, but no one can for certain say either one is painted by him?”

Accepting the glass of wine, Delphine nodded. “Oui.” Taking a small sip, she shrugged. “And even though they suspect it’s just a copy, it’s still treated as a treasure.”

“Huh.” Cosima sipped her wine. “So, this is the first year you haven’t gone with your family?”

Delphine nodded, picking up the card and reading it over again. It had been a family tradition, and she was the one to break it. Not her parents who were always too busy for anything else, but she the daughter was suddenly too busy to go home..too busy to even remember her birthday and Paris and the Lourve. It’s not like she could leave anyway. She would never be allowed to leave the country unless DYAD permitted it. They didn’t have time for such frivolous things as birthday traditions, even if she had remembered them.

A year ago she was just a lab tech, newly graduated and trying to outshine her co-workers, absorbed with work during the weekdays, and spending the weekends with her friends and occasionally her family. She had a life outside of work, lunches with friends at cafes, flirting with men in clubs and dancing past midnight.

That was now a thing of the past since she was promoted to monitor. Now, she was always running, always in a panic. Nothing was ever quick enough. Tests took too much time. Results took too long to come back. She was always running but getting nowhere.

Even when she wasn’t working, there was Cosima, the physical representation of the sickness bearing down on them like a time bomb waiting to explode. Cosima with her sisters and her secrets. They both had so many secrets. She didn’t know anything beyond what was on the surface, her own boss plotting deaths of co-workers and using her to do his dirty work. Her own girlfriend, always hiding, always lying, thinking she was being clever.

God her life was a mess. Was she the villain? Was she the heroine? Her life was chaos. None of it made any sense and she didn’t see it clearing up anytime soon. She had never had so little information yet had so much relying on her in her life.

“Hey… you alright?” Cosima was suddenly in front of her, an arm braced against the prep table on either side of her, a concerned look on her face. “You look a little far off.”

Her life was a mess but it wasn’t without it’s benefits, she thought as she slipped an arm around the woman’s waist, pulling her close. “With you here? Everything is perfect.”

Cosima chuckled, her tongue peeking out from between her teeth as melted against the taller frame, brushing her lips against Delphine’s. “Did you have something you wanted to do for your birthday… like Toronto style?” She was toying with the cord of Delphine’s hoodie, her eyes open and expecting.

Delphine nodded, feeling the familiar pull starting inside her and radiating out, consuming her completely. “You.” She whispered, inching the woman’s dress up.

With a smirk, Cosima reached down and tugged her dress up and off easily, letting it fall to the floor before straightening her glasses. “You know, it’s not your birthday yet.” She unzipped Delphine’s hoodie, pushing it off her shoulders, reaching for the woman’s tank top.

“Do you want to wait another three days?” Delphine slipped off her stool, turning so that she was pressing the brunette against the prep counter, reaching down to hook her hands around the back of her thighs, easily lifting the smaller form onto the surface. Even this was chaos, Delphine thought as she tugged the woman’s tights and underwear off in one move, capturing hungry lips in a kiss. It was chaos, but it was chaos she welcomed. It was chaos she at least had a tiny bit of control of. “Lay back.” She commanded sternly against the brunette’s lips, her hand sliding up the center of the woman’s abdomen until she stopped at the valley of her breasts, pressing back just slightly.

Cosima groaned, the chilled counter-top cold against her back.

As Delphine stood between the woman’s knees, her hand tracing the lines of her body, she marveled at this magnificent creature that had caused so much discord in her life. “So beautiful.” She whispered, pulling up a stool and taking a seat. As her tongue claimed the woman before her, she knew her own bliss. This was the control she had, where everything came together and she could understand where she belonged. A hand in her hair attempted to guide her, to dictate her actions, but she resisted, refusing to give in.

_Je t'aime_ , the words coursed through her mind as hips rolled against her mouth and fingers. She knew it, deep down, that this was love, a love that she found irritatingly persistent. She wouldn’t dare voice the words, not when Cosima barely trusted her, and not when she herself had so much to hide. No, they weren’t stable enough for the type of love she expected she’d find when she was younger. Even as she felt the brunette’s body reacting to her touch, nails digging into her shoulder as she felt the tremors coursing through the woman, this was all she needed, even if everything else was nonsensical.


	15. Lachesism+Liberosis (jaybear1701)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lachesism: The desire to be struck by disaster.
> 
> Liberosis: The desire to care less about things.

Cosima stood on the near-deserted platform of Huxley Station, the tips of her black boots toeing the thick yellow band of the safety line.  The subfreezing wind of the Toronto winter lashed against her, a sharp sting across the skin of her exposed face, and bit down into the marrow of her bones. 

But she welcomed it.

The cold was preferable to the maelstrom that had swirled deep within her chest the moment she had turned on the television at Scott’s apartment and watched the newscaster report on a tragedy at the Dyad Institute:

_Delphine Cormier, the Institute’s former director, killed in a private plane crash._

If Cosima had considered the pain of her breakup with Delphine to be excruciating, the agony following the news of her death was utterly and irrevocably unbearable.  It was a vortex that robbed Cosima of the air in her lungs and made her stomach lurch, mouth watering hot as bile burned up her throat. The anguish seared away her ability to function, her heart convulsing with every single beat, each strand of striated muscle threatening to rip apart.  
    
For days, all she had wanted to do was excise that hemorrhaging organ, now as malignant as the other tumors in her body, and cast it out. If only she could stop caring. If only it could be that easy. To stop feeling. To stop…  _everything_.  
  
But she couldn’t.  
  
Wouldn’t.  
  
She deserved that pain.  
  
_Needed it._  
  
Over the protests of the others—Sarah, Felix, and Scott being the most vocal—Cosima had convinced herself that she was somehow to blame for Delphine’s death… her  _murder_. Cosima wasn’t naïve. She knew that Topside or Neolution had killed Delphine. Cosima had accepted the fault, regardless of accuracy or fairness. And after Shay had shown her Delphine’s business card, with her tag number scrawled neatly in gold marker at the corner, it finally dawned on Cosima that perhaps Delphine had never expected to see Cosima again.

That awareness had boiled rapidly in Cosima’s gut, fury bubbling at what seemed like Delphine’s martyrdom, as well as her apparent decision to once again deprive Cosima of choice. And she had wanted to hate Delphine. So badly that she shook from that desire.

But she couldn’t.

Wouldn’t.

She loved Delphine too much.

And despite eventually coming to understand and accept that she might not have been able to save Delphine even if she had known about the mortal threat to her ex-lover, Cosima still spent every waking second obsessing over whether she could have anyway.

She  _should have_ , Cosima thought as she blew out a harsh breath into the night air and watched it wisp upward and dissipate.  
  
Delphine should have said something, yes.

But Cosima also should have recognized that something was wrong the minute she had seen Delphine standing alone outside of Bubbles, hands shoved deep into the pockets of her black coat, shivering in the cold, her beautiful face breaking with emotion. Should have felt the despair in Delphine’s kiss, the tremble of her soft lips. Should have identified the resignation in her teary eyes. Should have stopped Delphine from driving away and disappearing into the black.  
  
Reaching even further back, Cosima should never have allowed Delphine to end their relationship. Should have fought for her. For  _them_. Should have trust her. Should have focused the crises at hand instead of further complicating matters with romantic entanglements. Should have done so many things differently, in hindsight, that it was driving her  _mad_.  
  
Should have.  
  
Would have.  
  
Could have.  
  
It was that madness that brought Cosima to the train platform in the dead of night, past 11 o’clock and slowly creeping toward the witching hour. In the distance, she could make out the single bright light of the GO train fast approaching. She imagined she could even feel the vibrations of the machine rumbling along the track.

She wondered if this was what Beth had felt the day she ended her life. Futile. Out-of-control. Helpless against a fate that rose like a tsunami and wiped out everything in its path. If everything they did resulted in the same  _bullshit_ , then why not let unmitigated  _disaster_ overtake her? 

Cosima curled her numb fingers into her palm, clenching her fists. The train blew its horn, a long, loud, plaintive sound that she could feel in her ribs.  
  
The train drew closer… closer…. closer…  
  
She licked her lips and inched ever closer to the edge, a dark dread expanding beneath her breast as her heart pounded and pounded and pounded. It would be so easy, she thought, to just step off. To escape. To follow Delphine into oblivion.

A deafening roar filled Cosima’s ears and she wasn’t sure if it was from the blood rushing between her temples or the thundering of the oncoming train. She shut her eyes, timing the jump, counting down the seconds to impact.  
  
Her muscles tensed.   
  
Coiled tight.   
  
Ready to spring at the slightest pressure.  
  
Cosima jolted when another sound cut through the din—the high trill of her clone phone—and she took a wobbly step backward just as the train rushed past, a sudden gust of wind threatening to knock her off-balance. Teetering as she fought to maintain her footing, she exhaled sharply and doubled over, gripping her knees, unable to believe what she had almost done.  
  
The phone kept ringing and ringing over the sound of the train’s squealing brakes, the metallic slide of the doors, the tinny, bored voice of the conductor announcing that it was the last stop. When she felt she had her heart rate under control, Cosima straightened out and breathed in the salty smell of diesel and ozone before finally…  _finally_ …answering the call.  
  
“Hello?” She said, amazed at how she managed to keep her voice from wavering.  
  
“Cos, where the bloody hell are you?”   
  
It was Sarah, worry and agitation making her British accent even thicker.  
  
“Just,” Cosima cleared her throat, “out for a walk.”  
  
She could feel Sarah’s disapproval even over the phone, but if Sarah was going to voice her concern, it was drowned out by the blare of the train’s horn as it pulled away from the platform.  
  
“What the,” Sarah started, “are you at a train station?”  
  
“No,” Cosima blatantly lied and Sarah, surprisingly, didn’t call her out for it. Instead, the silence stretched and stretched like a rubber band ready to snap, until Sarah sighed.  
  
“We got some information.”  
  
Cosima’s fingers tightened on the phone and she pressed it harder against her ear. “What information?”  
  
“Listen, I don’t want you to get you worked up or anything…”  
  
“Sarah, just tell me.”  
  
“It’s Delphine.”  
  
Cosima’s heart stopped.  
  
“She… she might be alive, Cos.”  
  
Knees weakening, Cosima let out a strangled cry and nearly crumpled onto the gray cement  of the platform.  
  
“How…?”  
  
“I’ll explain at Siobhan’s.” There was an anxious uncertainty lacing Sarah’s words. “Can you meet me there?”   
  
“Yes,” Cosima said, wiping away the hot tears streaming down her icy cheeks. “Yes.”  
  
“Good,” Sarah breathed out. “I’ll see you soon.”  
  
Cosima hung up and shook her head, biting back another sob as her body shook uncontrollably and she watched, through blurry vision, the flashing red tail lights of the train fade into the night. 


	16. Occhiolism (twig_height)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Occhiolism: The awareness of the smallness of your perspective.

“You’re an asshole, Cosima,” Felix said as he casually sipped his glass of whisky.

Cosima sat up stunned, from her place laid out on the couch to look at Felix leaning over the kitchen counter.

“Seriously, you just let her go.”

Cosima sighed. “Come on Fee, what was I supposed to do?” Cosima said as she laid back down.

“Go after her,” he said as if it were obvious. “You’re both idiots.”

“Why do you even care? It’s not like you two will be braiding each other’s hair anytime soon.”

“Gag me. I care about you dipshit.” Felix said. “Whether you believe it or not, you’re not done with her.”

It had been a few weeks since Cosima left Delphine standing in Felix’s doorway, the muffled sounds of what sounded like crying coming from the hallway, but Cosima wasn’t entirely sure if it was just her anguished cries bouncing off the loft walls.

“That’s not fair,” Cosima said taking a sip from her wine glass. “She broke up with me.”

“That may be, but when have you ever let something stand in your way?”

Cosima was silent for a long moment. “I guess it was the suddenness of it? I wasn’t expecting to see her so soon after she left.” Cosima let out a slow breath. “Then she shows up here, I was so happy…and she just…ends it… I was caught off guard.”

“What about now?”

“I dunno.” Cosima took another sip of her wine. “I’m angry. I just want to forget it ever happened… _she_  ever happened” Cosima trailed off with a small shrugged.

“You’re an idiot,” Felix said again from the kitchen.

“Can we not do this right now, please?” Cosima said, not in the mood to deal with it.

“Do you even know what she’s been up to since she broke things off?”

Cosima shook her head. “No.”

Felix rolled his eyes and scoffed. “I see you’re all putting those phones to good use,” he sighed and set his glass on the kitchen counter. He made his way over to the couch, shoving Cosima’s legs off causing her to awkwardly sit up trying not to spill her wine as he took a seat, facing her.

“Look, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but you need to go see Delphine. You two need to work your shit out.”

Cosima looked up in shock.

“Don’t give me that. Sarah told me what she did, what she’s doing. I think she’s bloody nuts, but… maybe she really does love you.”

“Whatd'ya mean?” Cosima asked, brows furrowed, attention focused squarely on Felix.

“While you’ve been so focused on your new plaything, she’s out there playing GI Jane. It’s a mistake if you ask me, but–”

“Are you fucking kidding me,” Cosima threw her hands up in frustration, cutting him off. “You’re the one that pushed me to that stupid dating site in the first place.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t expect you to find someone on the first go,” Felix snickered. “You’ve been so focused on what’s between Shay’s legs, you seemed to have pushed everything else aside. Your work, clone club, – not that I blame you,” he laughed. “Hell, I’m surprised you’ve been able to tear yourself away long enough to grace a lowly peasant like me with your presence.”

Cosima glared at Felix. “I helped Alison,” she defended.

“Yeah, but only after some begging,” he replied.  "And you’re still sick.“ Felix paused. "You don’t seem happy. Are you…happy?” He asked, genuinely concerned.

Cosima looked down into her lap, fiddling with the wine glass and sighed, “No. Not really,” she said quietly.

“Then bloody do something about it.”

“Like what?” Cosima asked exasperated. “Delphine doesn’t want me, otherwise she would be here.”

“All I’m saying is, when you finally figure out what you really want, it may be too late.”

“It’s already too late. She’s gone,” Cosima replied sadly.

“That’s not what I meant,” Felix said, his frustration evident. “Am I gonna have to spell it out for you?”

“Looks like it.”

Felix grabbed the wine glass in Cosima’s hands and placed it on the coffee table.

“Delphine’s playing some serious double agent type shit. If Ferdinand finds out that Sarah isn’t actually being held at DYAD, she’ll wish she was on a plane to Frankfurt.” Felix waited a minute for it to sink in before continuing. He couldn’t read the look on Cosima’s normally expressive face. “Do you really want to leave things like this?”

“I–” Just as Cosima was about to respond the shrill ring of her blue clone phone went off, dancing across the coffee table, startling both Cosima and Felix.

Cosima glanced at the clock on the wall, it was 3:24 AM.

“Who the hell would be calling at this hour?” Cosima asked.

They both leaned forward to grab the cell phone, but Felix snagged it before Cosima could, and answered it.

“Yeah?” Felix barked into the phone, irritated. Cosima eyeing him, and mouthed “ _Who is it?_ ”

“Slow down, Sarah. Yeah, yeah, she’s right here…what?” Felix put the phone on speaker, right before Cosima snatched it from him.

“It’s Delphine. There was an accident. Her car went off the Bayview Bridge,” Sarah said almost regretfully, but as soon as the words had been uttered, Cosima didn’t register anything else.

_Car. Accident. Bridge_. Cosima suddenly dropped the phone as if it had just burned her. Her mouth hanging open.  _Delphine_.


	17. 23 Feels (23 Flavours, and Then Some) (trylonandperisphere)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which trylonandperisphere writes about all of the emotions, and then some.

Cosima’s hands were so gentle, tender in their ministrations as they slipped through Delphine’s wet hair, finger-combing any knots and tangles out slowly. Delphine felt herself take in a deep breath and let it out in a long, soft sigh, her wound flaring with pain for a second as she did. The pain was still there, but it was fading. It wouldn’t be long before she could get her abdomen wet and these quiet, careful sessions of Cosima washing her hair as her head tilted back into the sink, or sponge-bathing her healing body one small section at a time, would be over, replaced by her standing in the shower alone, able to independently care for herself again. She both looked forward to and dreaded it — feeling strong, herself again, not a burden to her amour or the others, no matter how many times they told her they were glad to do it after her many sacrifices, yet also missing these intimate moments where she felt she could lay her burdens down and just bask in Cosima’s love for her.

Cosima’s love. She almost lost it forever, first by keeping secrets and then by spilling her blood on a cold, concrete floor. She didn’t expect to be alive, much less be here, in this safe house, coaxed through her convalescence by so many people she had feared would just as soon wish she’d disappear. She raised her head with Cosima’s guidance once the clone had finished squeezing the excess moisture out, and then felt the familiar tug of the towel against her scalp as Cosima patted and massaged her head.

“What’re you smiling at,” came at her in Cosima’s low, slightly teasing tone, and she could tell just from her voice that her sweet scientist was smiling, as well.

“Mmm. You’ve gotten so good at that. I love your touch,” Delphine murmured, briefly catching her caretaker’s hand and kissing it. “I swear my hair looks and feels better now than it ever did when I did it myself.”

“Well, thank Krystal for that,” Cosima noted. “If it weren’t for her I’d still be using a brush and that conditioner that made you look like a transient.” They both giggled and Cosima finished patting her dry, then gently took her elbow. “C'mon, Doctor Cormier, back to bed.”

Rising was still difficult, but at least her gait had progressed from lurching and buckling to shuffling, then distinctly separate, if ginger, steps. She had already teased Cosima that soon she should be able to practice striding in her four-and-a-half-inch heels, again, to which the brunette mock-scolded her, “it’s sexy until you tip over.”

Settled in the bed again, she took a sip of juice through the straw Cosima offered her, then caught the nurturing woman’s hand again and kissed it some more. Cosima smiled, put down the cup, and then leaned over to rummage in the nightstand.

“What are we doing now,” Delphine asked, intertwining their fingers, and Cosima straightened back up with a thick folder and an iPad.

“ _I_  am going to go through these reports on transgenic organ growth,” she answered, and placed the tablet on Delphine’s lap, “while  _you_  are going to chill out and entertain yourself. And I swear to God, if I find you looking at anything more taxing than footage of baby animals…” She finished the sentence with a pointed look, which prompted Delphine to sigh again.

“But I could be helping you. Cosima, we know at some point you’ll most likely need a transplant—”

“I  _know,_ believe me, I know,” the smaller woman cut her off, “but right now, I’m doing fine and you’re not, so, take a chill pill, Cormier… unless you want me to give you a literal chill pill to knock you out.”

Delphine poked at the tablet, a vertical line appearing between her brows and her lips forming a frustrated pout. Cosima chuckled.

“You’re so cute,” she told the Frenchwoman, reaching over to lightly poke her protruding lower lip. “You can pout all you want to. Pouty Delphine is, like, a million times better than cold, determined, distancing Delphine, anytime.” Delphine met this with an eyeroll, which Cosima mocked with a smirk before turning her attention to the papers.

They were silent for a while, save the occasional shuffling of papers by Cosima, and a moment when an unexpected ad popped up on the iPad and Delphine had to quickly mute the sound. The sun was pushing light through the semi-diaphanous curtains at an almost horizontal angle, then, casting a golden glow on both of them as they read. Every once in a while, Delphine would glance up and admire how it lit the contours of Cosima’s face, or Cosima would peek to see Delphine’s profile, backlit and beautiful and oh so alive, as she gazed neutrally at the screen or, now and then, caught her lower lip in her teeth as she concentrated. Finally, Delphine cleared her throat.

“Hm. This is interesting,” she ventured, raising her her eyebrows and turning slightly towards the studious woman beside her. Cosima took a second to pull her attention slightly from an important section and look up at Delphine from under her brows.

“Mmwhat,” she asked, somewhat absently, suspecting that her beloved was less interested in online content than in catching her attention.

“‘Twenty-three emotions people feel, but can’t explain,’” the blonde in the bed read aloud. “'Sonder: The realization that each passerby has a life as vivid and complex as your own.’” Cosima let out a small snort.

“Yeah, I used to get that,” she commented, “until I found out I’m a clone and everything. I highly doubt there are a lot of other people out there who are science experiments on the lam from a handful of nefarious cults and organizations. Working nine to five rarely gets that convoluted. Although,” she cocked her head and thought a moment, “I guess if you count all the people involved in all this shit it does start to add up. And who’s to say other people don’t have equally weird things going on that we never know about?”

“Exactly,” Delphine nodded. “You never know what’s happening under the surface. It could be that any person you see on the street has led an exciting life, or that, at least, their thoughts and perceptions are so vivid that their internal life is just as fascinating as a person who has explored distant lands, or has been married seven times.”

“Wow,” Cosima exclaimed. “Look at you. Are you sure you’re not spending your down time trying to get another doctorate? Maybe in philosophy or psychology?”

“Brat,” Delphine mumbled, reaching to poke the the shoulder of the woman needling her. “I just thought it was interesting.” Cosima observed the petulant jut of the blonde’s lower lip shift back into pout mode.

“No, no,” she encouraged, leaning forward, tone reassuring. “It is. Read me another one.” Delphine glanced at her suspiciously, then acquiesced.

“Mm… 'Opia: The ambiguous intensity of looking someone in the eye, which can feel simultaneously invasive and vulnerable.’” She looked back at her companion, who straightened up in her seat to look back directly into her eyes. They both stared for a moment, soaking in each other’s gaze.

“Yeah,” Cosima said softly, after several beats of silence. “Although, it’s not always invasive, really. I mean it can be, if you’re, like,  _peering_  at them with questions, or don’t really know the person. Sometimes it’s just a connection, you know? A nice connection.”

“Oui,” Delphine answered, a small smile playing about her lips. Cosima’s hand was back on the bed, so she took it and kissed it again, watching the bloom of her lover’s grin spread slowly, full of delight at the contact, the bond reaffirmed between them.

“Okay,” she smiled, after a moment, turning back to the tablet. “How about, emm… 'Vellichor: The strange wistfulness of used bookshops.’”

“That's… oddly specific,” the brunette opined, scrunching her brow. “Here, let me see that.” She climbed up to sit next to the Frenchwoman on the bed and look at the screen. “'Énouement,’” she read, “'the bittersweetness of having arrived in the future, seeing how things turn out, but not being able to tell your past self.’ Yikes, that’s kind of depressing.”

“Hm,” Delphine responded, with a small tilt of her head. “It makes me think of when I thought I was dying, you know? I was so sure my life was over, resigned, thinking I’d never know happiness again, and then I woke up, and there you were.” Cosima turned to look at her seriously, her face slightly tensed with emotional pain. “I wish I could go back and sit next to myself on the garage floor, and say 'don’t give up, everything is all right. They will find you and you will recover, and it will bring you closer to one another, again.”

Cosima’s expression relaxed, and she leaned down, drawn to her lover’s lips. They kissed softly, just touching, the gesture expressing such depth of feeling, so many words.

“Yeah, and I wish I could go back and tell myself to trust you, to not feel so rejected and act like an asshat,” Cosima related, kissing her again when the blonde took her jaw in hand reassuringly. She let the touch soothe her and eased back. “Is that a French word? It sounds like one.”

“Mm, not that I’ve ever heard of.” Delphine slightly shook her head, looking thoughtful.

“Maybe I’m pronouncing it wrong. Ay-nyoo-MONT. EH-noo-MAWN.”

Delphine giggled, glancing at the screen.

“I can read it right there,” she pointed out, “and I don’t recognize it.”

“Huhn,” Cosima huffed, eyes roaming down the list. “'Mauerbauertraurigkeit: The inexplicable urge to push people away, even close friends who you really like.’ Jeeze, we don’t know any British people who look like me who do anything like that, ever. 'Jouska: A hypothetical conversation that you compulsively play out in your head.’ Well, I’ve had a lot of those in my time… particularly with you.”

“Yes? Such as?”

“You don’t think I came up with 'why don’t we admit what this is really about’ on the spur of the moment, do you?  _God_ , I was… I was so  _smitten_  with you. I just  _knew_  you were my monitor, but I couldn’t help myself. The funny thing was, I was absolutely certain you were flirting with me, even with all that business with Leekie.”

“Hm,” Delphine pursed her lips. “Maybe I was, but I just didn’t know it, yet.”

“Ah-ha,” Cosima smiled and glanced back at the computer. “Is there a word on there for that? No. How about, ’ _Agnosteros,_ ’ like you didn’t know you were falling for me?” Delphine laughed and tried one herself.

“’ _Laeviculamas,_ ’ a clueless love.” They were both chuckling, now.

“Ooh, Latin. Very nice,” Cosima nodded. Her laughter slowly died down, and she cleared her throat.

“But, like, seriously, Delphine, I… I thought about having so many conversations with you. I’d imagined us talking about our childhoods, our, I guess,  _normal_ lives… or just what it would be like to be with you in peace, without all the craziness, you know? I thought about… when you came back from Frankfurt, how I’d tell you that I loved you, and I missed you… and then I did, but I never thought you wouldn’t say it back.”

Delphine bit her lip, hearing the crack in her lover’s voice, the residual devastation.

“I’m so sorry, mon cœur,” she breathed, and stroked Cosima’s cheek.

“No, no, I mean, I didn’t know, you know? I know now why you did it. Back then I would… I would go over that conversation again and again in my head, trying to figure out what happened, what I or you could have done or said differently. I did it until I, I don’t know, I couldn’t take it anymore, I had to… make some kind of white noise in my head. And then I was so bitter and hurt, I could only lash out.” Cosima’s eyes had filled, and they began to slowly spill over, silent tears tracking once, twice, down her face. “When you came back I had this conversation in my head,” she continued, “where I’d tell you about how I nearly died, how it was you that brought me back. And then after you broke things off, it was one hypothetical discussion after another; you’d take me back, you’d hurt me worse… and then, then as I worked out more and more what really happened, what you were doing while I was being so mad at you, I imagined, I rehearsed how I would apologize to you, let you know that I understood your difficult choices… and I finally did, but that night…”

Her voice trailed off. They were both crying now, caught in the memories, reliving the emotions. They pulled each other close, Cosima’s arms around Delphine’s shoulders, gingerly avoiding her sore abdomen, Delphine’s hands finding her sweetheart’s head and neck.

“ _Shhh_ … shh, it’s okay, now,” the wounded woman reassured her amour, assured both of them. “ _Je t'aime_. I’m here, I’m alive, we’re together. You're… you’re going to get all better. We’ll reverse the effects, and Sarah and the others, they’ll come through. They always have, no matter how insane things have become. We’ll get Neolution off our backs, and you and I, we can have all the conversations we want, we need. We’ll have a lifetime of conversations, together.”

They held each other, Cosima’s face tucked into Delphine’s fair neck, and then, as their tears slowed and breath stopped hitching, forehead to forehead.

“I love you,” the small scientist said. “We're… going to be okay. We’re making progress, right?”

“Right, my love,” the blonde responded. “We’re making progress. We couldn’t have come this far, gone through all this, and… and not make it. It just won’t happen. I won’t believe it. I believe in you, in us… in all of us.”

They lingered in their embrace a while longer, giving and taking comfort, until they eased apart for a chaste kiss, and Cosima wiped her face with her hands.

“Huhn,” she said, after a moment, and Delphine gave her an inquiring look. The bespectacled woman pointed at the iPad display. “Look at all of these. 'Ellipsism: A sadness that you’ll never be able to know how history will turn out. Nodus Tollens: The realization that the plot of your life doesn’t make sense to you anymore.’ I mean, not that I haven’t felt those things, but all put together these really are a downer. I, uh, I guess it says 'sorrows,’ but who’s to say you can’t have happy feelings you can’t explain?”

“I don’t know. No-one,” Delphine shrugged. “I mean, you should know better than I. English is your first language.”

“Yeah, but I don’t think these are all English, and you said you didn’t recognize the French-looking one. Wait a minute…” She tapped her lips with her forefinger, then gestured at the screen again. “I’ve heard of this. These aren’t real-life, in-use words. Some guy made them up.”

“Quoi?”

“These words, there’s this dude who, like, puts them together as some kind of art project. He’s got a book, or a blog or something.” She touched the tablet and scrolled down. “Yeah, here it is. _The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows_  by John Koenig. You know, I think I’ve seen this before.” She tapped away for a moment, conducting a search. “Yup, it was a while ago, but I did. Here are some more words. 'degrassé _: adj_., entranced and unsettled by the vastness of the universe, experienced in a jolt of recognition that the night sky is not just a wallpaper but a deeply foreign ocean whose currents are steadily carrying off all other castaways, who share our predicament but are already well out of earshot—worlds and stars who would’ve been lost entirely except for the scrap of light they were able to fling out into the dark, a message in a bottle that’s only just now washing up in the Earth’s atmosphere, an invitation to a party that already ended a million years ago.’ There’s nothing sad about that. It’s pretty cool, in fact. Ha! It’s derived from Neil DeGrasse Tyson!”

Delphine watched her soul mate light up as she read, thought and commented, and felt as though the smile on her own face was somehow deepening, spreading into and under her skin, as if the smile became not just an expression, but part of a feeling itself, reinforcing it, and making her smile even more. The feeling was complex and simple. Fondness, admiration, familiarity with her dear one’s quirks but retaining the ability to be surprised by them. She smiled with love, and her smile became one with her love for Cosima.

“You definitely have that emotion as part of your character, that fascination with the 'vastness of the universe,’ and also the connections within it. For you, it inspires you… it inspires  _me_. That sounds as though it could have been written just for you.”

“Yeah, well, how about 'dialecstatic:. hearing a person with a thick accent pronounce a certain phrase… and wanting them to repeat it over and over until the vowels pool in the air and congeal into a linguistic taffy you could break apart and give as presents.’ Yeah.” She turned to look at her girlfriend with an amused affection, and the blonde shook her head slightly with a chuckle.

“That sounds like you look when you ask me to repeat myself, sometimes. But do you think my accent is that thick?”

“Your accent is just right,” Cosima declared. “You know, these definitions are a lot more poetic on his web site. The ones on the list seem kind of dull, in comparison.” She squinted back at the screen, and read again. “'Ecstatic shock: the surge of energy upon catching a glance from someone you like—a thrill that starts in your stomach, arcs up through your lungs and flashes into a spontaneous smile—which scrambles your ungrounded circuits and tempts you to chase that feeling with a kite and a key.’ Nice.’” She turned to give the Frenchwoman a broad grin, her tongue protruding slightly between her teeth, and was answered by a slow wink which drew a flush to her cheeks, before reading another word.

“'Kairosclerosis:’” she continued, “'the moment you realize that you’re currently happy’ — hey, here we go — 'you’re currently happy, consciously trying to savor the feeling….which prompts your intellect to identify it, pick it apart and put it in context, where it will slowly dissolve until it’s little more than an aftertaste.” Her smile crumpled into a look of annoyance. “Okay, that was not as happy as I expected.”

“But still, it can be true,” Delphine noted. “I don’t know anything about the person who, as you say, 'made them up,’ but they definitely have a use, both describing a phenomenon and letting you know it exists, not just in you, but in other people as well.”

“That’s true,” Cosima accepted “and, if you think about it, it doesn’t really matter that they were made up by one person. All words are made up. They’ve gotta come from somewhere, and all words were made up and not within common use at some time. Just because they’re new and deliberately composed doesn’t mean they’re less real, especially when people start to use them more often.” She pressed the screen again. “Yeah, here’s a quote from a lexicographer: 'People say to me, "How do I know if a word is real?” You know, anybody who’s read a children’s book knows that love makes things real. If you love a word, use it. That makes it real…’ Hmm.“ They both thought quietly, again, for a moment, until Delphine was overtaken by a yawn.

"Aw, you must be tired,” Cosima said, pushing the iPad away and placing her hand on the convalescing woman’s knee. “See? Even talking still takes it out of you. I should probably get back to those papers and you can take a nap.”

Delphine didn’t protest. Her mind had been working, and she had enjoyed the interaction with her re-found love, but she could feel the weight of exhaustion settling in on her. It had been nice to talk about something so seemingly frivolous, so different from their usual exchanges about their health, the situation with Neolution, what Sarah was up to now. At the same time, it had made her think, and brought forward feelings she’d been having, but didn’t fully recognize, trying not to get mired in anxiety, the future or the past. It was definitely more to her taste than watching videos of baby animals. Any time she got to share with Cosima, any opportunity to fully communicate, when there had been so little communication before, and their time together had nearly ended, was precious to her now. They both survived by way of miracle, and she didn’t want to waste their time worrying, when they could spend it healing, her wound, Cosima’s lungs and uterus, and the the emotional injuries the last few months had inflicted on them.

Cosima placed a kiss on her forehead and slid off the bed, back into her chair. Delphine pulled the covers up higher, allowing her head to settle into the pillow, just able to see the studious woman in the side of her vision, through the slits of drooping eyelids. She watched as a small, reflective smile curled her lover’s lips, and met Cosima’s eyes when she looked up from her paperwork at her.

“Fate accompli, F-A-T-E,” the small woman beside her bed shared, both mischief and warmth in her voice. “The sensation you experience when you meet and realize, so suddenly and completely that it feels like you’re dreaming, even if you don’t want it to happen, that this person is the one you love, you’re meant to be with. You are each other’s destiny.” She reached her hand out over the bed, and Delphine took it, a pang of adoration and a wash of contentment flowing through her, bringing out a returning grin. They held hands, Cosima idly stroking the French woman’s with her thumb for a bit, then giving it a squeeze, and continuing to hold it as she looked back down at her folder. The only light in the room now was the small reading lamp on the nightstand, and the dimness lulled Delphine closer to slumber. Still she gazed at her love, Cosima not noticing until she heard the hint of a whisper.

“What are you thinking about over there? Can’t turn your brain off,” Cosima asked fondly, raising her head to take in the supine woman’s look of of determination, the working of small muscles expressing both weariness and the resolve to figure something out. The blonde thought, then sighed.

“I can’t think of a clever word for it, or just a little phrase,” she half-mumbled, and Cosima leaned closer.

“A word for what, baby,” the American asked softly.

“There’s a famous quote by a writer, Germaine de Staël. Delphine’s eyes and mouth condensed in concentration. "She said, ah, 'L'amour est l'emblème de l'éternité, il confond toute la notion de temps, efface toute la mémoire d'un commencement, toute la crainte d'une extrémité.’” She looked back at her paramour again. “It means 'Love is the emblem of eternity; it confounds all notion of time, effaces all memory of a beginning, all fear of an end.’” She met Cosima’s eyes with her own seriously, genuinely. “Everything we’ve been through, the times we’ve been apart, the love I felt for you was my constant. I thought there was no hope, no time left, but through  _this_ ,” she touched her chest over her heart, her eyes growing damp, “I found I had time, I have hope that we’ll get through whatever comes. It's… un amour qui sauve la vie… amour qui ressuscite. It’s a love that is so strong, it has brought us both back to each other from the brink of death.”

Cosima’s lips trembled and her eyes filled again. She got up and slid into the bed next to Delphine, snuggling up to her with one hand covering and fingers interweaving with those the woman she loved still held over her heart.

“That's… that’s really beautiful,” she said quietly. “I don't… think you have to condense that. Sometimes a feeling is, like, just too much for a single word.” Delphine gave her a small smile as her eyes eased closed.

“Je t'aime,” she murmured. Then, as if from a distance, “after my nap, will you let me help with the research?”

“We work best as a team,” Cosima answered, brushing a kiss against a relaxed cheek. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”


	18. Opia, Chrysalism, Rubatosis (otp324B21)

Written by thatscomplex

Opia, Chrysalism, Rubatosis

The Coming Tide

 

It was the softest of kisses, Cosima decided, that drove her insane. It was Delphine barely grazing her lips against Cosima's as she straddled her lap, flesh pressed against flesh. It was the tiny nips Delphine loved to deliver as she cupped Cosima's cheeks, both pulling her closer while keeping her at bay, preventing the need from deepening the kiss. It was the control she gave up to the blonde, something Delphine relished, as Cosima felt hands sliding down her front, caressing her breasts. This close to her heart, could Delphine feel the irregular beat thrumming in her chest, or the way it sped up as each second passed? Her own hands were restricted to the smooth, pale skin of hips that inched closer, the remaining space between their bodies that much more obvious by the increasing desire and Cosima's internal storm raging against her own constant flaw of always disobeying. The internal chaos matched the storm outside, wind howling and the rain splattering against the apartment windows, the same rain that had caught them on the way home from the movies. Already her hands were sliding, moving to caress soft curves, handful of flesh that made the blonde whimper in high-pitched surprise, a sound she rarely made outside of the bedroom. It was a sound Cosima had claimed as her own, one she felt she created, enough to spur her deviance into action, her body leaning forward, attempting to create a seal between their bodies, to eliminate all space until they were a mass of limbs and damp skin.

 

Delphine seemed to enjoy the sudden transgression, the complete denial of the rules she had set earlier before clothes became pools of material on the floor and they took up residence in the center of the bed. It wasn't until Cosima's hand moved between them, fingertips slipping past the small patch of curls, finding the physical evidence of Delphine's arousal, that the blonde pulled away, clearing her throat to chase away that sound that Cosima owned, even as fingertips brushed awakened nerve ending, circling swollen flesh knowingly, a blonde eyebrow rising in question.

 

A hand moved to the center of Cosima chest, pushing her to lean back just slightly, just enough so Delphine's fingers could wrap around the tattooed wrist, pulling the hand away from her arousal without saying a word. Words weren't needed anyway, Cosima knew what she had done and she knew it was her one and only warning. Again she could feel her heart, this time against the fingertips at her wrist, a firm yet gentle touch that increased her heartbeat double-fold even as the grip released.

 

There were other ways of subverting the blonde's control, Cosima found, as she wasted no time bringing her fingertips to her own mouth, greedily enjoy the remnant taste that was all Delphine.

 

Delphine's hazel eyes were as dark as the foreboding sky, watching as fingers disappeared into Cosima's mouth. The blonde's body was illuminated by the occasional flash of lightning as she leaned back just a bit more, her hips raising just enough that the shadows shifted deliciously on her abdomen, muscles tensing for the barest of moments before she slowly slid herself onto the toy that was secured to Cosima's body by leather and buckles, a soft breathy sound emerging from the blonde's lips as she took a minute to herself.

 

Cosima was mesmerized by an infinite number of details at that moment, watching silicone disappear between slick folds, the strong hand that moved to circle her bicep with short nails leaving crescent shapes in her skin. She was mesmerized by the furrow in Delphine's brow as she was slowly filled, her eyes closed in silent revelry, and the way a soft lip was captured between ivory teeth, the corners of her mouth tipped up in a blissful smile. Cosima watched as, for the slightest of moments, the tall frame arched just a bit, and she could just imagine the toy was made of her own flesh, sliding along the velvety walls, caressing depths her fingers weren't long enough to reach.

 

Delphine finally opened her eyes, sitting up straighter, her arm moving to slip around Cosima's neck, pulling their bodies together. This was the moment Cosima lived for, their bodies flush against each other, when they became one entity and lips met her own in a hungry kiss. She lived for the soft laugh against her lips as the blonde's pelvis began to move, long legs circling Cosima's hips in a tight embrace, an anchor to support the fluid rolling motion of her body. Life was when their lips separated and Cosima could see every emotion, the soft brush of their noses bumping against each other. It was the look on Delphine's face when Cosima whispered, "I love you," into the space between them, into the air they shared as one being. It was the "je t'aime, mon amour," that was whimpered in response, words she could never hear enough.

 

Cosima could feel the rapid beating of her heart again, the harness causing delicious friction that fueled her own movements. It was passion and desire at it's finest, her heart beating in her ears louder than the falling rain, and stronger than the thunder that followed each flash and as her hand came to rest against the center of the blonde's chest, she could feel the heartbeat matching her own, both hearts beating rapidly, the pulse of nature flowing through them, connecting their bodies with the storm outside.

 

Cosima's lips claimed Delphine's once more and they moved together as one. Delphine was the ebbing tide, receding back into the ocean only to flow forward again, waves breaking against the smooth shore that was Cosima, welcoming each surge that crashed upon her, an idiosyncratic rhythm of push and pull that was a creation all their own. "You're so beautiful." Watching Delphine, she couldn't stop the words even if she tried, her hands cupping breasts slick with a thin layer of sweat. She smiled as Delphine responded, French tumbling from her lips as she was no longer capable of English speech, no longer able to translate her thoughts as her body began to shake. Cosima didn't need to speak another language to understand the woman who's still-damp curls had fallen forward, framing her flushed cheeks, brushing against her own cheek as their foreheads met. Delphine tangled her fingers in Cosima's dreads, an intense look in her eyes, a look that stared into her, seeing her like only Delphine could, unable to defend herself from the open honesty that greeted her with hazel eyes.

 

Cosima swallowed, feeling lost in the gaze, feeling the blonde's movement slow down, growing more intense as she moved against her. Unable to resist, Cosima pulled the woman flush against her, turning their bodies and pinning the blonde to the bed, still joined at the hips. She watched as surprise morphed into delight and Delphine caressed her jaw. The legs that were still wrapped around her waist tightened, pulling her closer and in turn pulling her deeper. Cosima captured soft lips, muffling a moan as she began to move, feeling the legs around her loosen

 

Delphine whimpered into the kiss, her arms wrapping around the brunette's torso, pulling her closer. The need was still there, yet they moved together in agonizingly slow synchronicity, already-bruised lips continuing to seek refuge.

 

Cosima groaned as nails dug into her ribs, feeling the woman's body trembling beneath her, breaking off the kiss with a gasp from both women. She could feel the need in the woman that accompanied the trembling in her body, the resistance her hips met with each thrust and pull. The blonde bit her bottom lip, never wanting it to end, never wanting the feeling of Cosima moving against her to disappear. Suddenly she was back at DYAD, crying over Cosima's seizing form, her body betraying itself with illness. Tears began to fill hazel eyes and Cosima brushed her lips along the woman's jaw. "Stop that." She whispered knowingly, very familiar with the look in the blonde's eyes. "I'm right here." She brushed her lips over the woman's mouth, her tongue teasing the skin there until the blonde opened her mouth, releasing her lip. "Stop fighting it." She whispered. "I'll never leave you." She pressed her lips against Delphine's once more, knowing that was all it would take before the woman's body tensed, pulling her close in a crushing embrace as trembles turned into earthquakes for an agonizingly long moment before she crashed back to Earth.

 

As the blonde's body slumped to the bed, Cosima continued to brush soft kisses along the woman's skin, down her throat and along the line of her collarbone. "I love you, Delphine." She reached down and unbuckled the harness, withdrawing from the blonde and tossing it aside as she curled against the woman's body, running her fingertips up limp but still trembling form as she kissed away the tears that slipped from light hazel eyes. "I'm not going anywhere."

 

Delphine nodded, her fingers intertwining with Cosima's. "Mon amour." She tried not to look at the past, to linger on things that were long past, to concentrate on the woman that was with her at that moment, a woman with lungs that were healed and no longer on the run. She turned to face the brunette, smiling softly as she pulled the woman to her. Feeling her, confirming she was really there sent a thrill through Delphine. She found her energy as she rolled Cosima onto her back, covering the shorter body with her own.


	19. Occhiolism (LadyZephyr)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alternate title is “Voicemail” set after season 3.
> 
> Written by: LadyZephyr
> 
> Inspired by “23 emotions ..” post.
> 
> Occhiolism: The awareness of the smallness of your perspective.

 

**7:41 pm**

“Hey Delphine it’s me.” Cosima pauses to adjust to hold the phone between her ear and the shoulder of her red coat, “So I have had enough of the clone dinner - and I’m on my way back into the city.”  Cosima pauses as she glances around the LCBO instead at the Ontario VQA section, “So I was thinking I could come to yours. I’m picking up this Ontario wine that Alison says is awesome. I guess we’ll see about that and a California red and maybe we could have like a night in?”

She imagines Delphine shaking her head at her, “Ok, I’m sorry but the really good French wine is like 30 dollars a bottle… and I can’t really spend that much money so you’ll have to settle your overly snooty Parisian self to eat and drink like us peasants or grad students. Anyway I’m going to hop a bus and then a subway so let me know.”

Cosima smiles, as she peruses the Ontario wines. Is it good enough for Delphine? Would she like it? Alison like it… but Alison admittedly had a substance abuse problem. Maybe she drinks like really shitty wine…

**7:58 pm**

“Okay Delphine, I know you check your messages regularly and I’m sorry. Yeah I know you’re not really snooty. And I probably mispronounced _Parisienne_ or whatever the hell I’m supposed to call you. So I got the 30 dollar bottle of French wine, and the Californian. It’s really good, you’ll like it, I promise. I’m on my way into Toronto now and I’ll connect with you on route to see where you want me to get off. Are you still living at the same apartment? I could just drop by if you’re home - or meet you at DYAD or whatever. Let me know.”

Cosima grins to herself, paper bag with her wine bottles settled on her lap as she plays with her phone, wishing she had taken more photos of Delphine. Why had she deleted them? Why had she taken so few? Stupid, she berates herself with a smile remembering the last kiss. The perfect kiss. Delphine had teared up, overwhelmed by it all and so had she. She’d take photos tonight, she’d make up the time.

Delphine was still afraid of her sisters, Cosima muses gesturing silently to herself, she’ll have to fix that. Maybe expose her one clone at a time, gently bring her into the fold. If either of them cry tonight, Cosima promises herself, it will be for a much better reason.

**8:31 pm**

“It’s me again,” Cosima opens voice laced with annoyance, “So like I decided to get a hotel tonight - just the Sheraton or whatever. I’m close now to where you are - I’m assuming you’re like working late or something. I know you haven’t seen anyone else. Even with your stupid lovers line… I can feel it, you know? So I’m waiting for your call and like getting kind of worried so please pick up and call me back. Oh god, you’re not still punishing me for Shay are you? Fuck, she meant nothing. I mean the sex was pretty good but… okay never mind that. I want you. I want to be with you. Just pick up the phone before I panic and like have to call Sarah.” She gestures pointlessly in the air as she continues to talk into her blue clone cell, balancing the bag of wine on her hip.

Cosima glances around the subway, still teaming with life as people make their way out to bars or home or wherever. Maybe she should tell Sarah. Or Siobhan or somebody. If Delphine is missing, but…it hasn’t been that long, right? There’s got to be another reason Delphine isn’t picking up. Anger at the Ontario wine. Or Shay. Or a late night movie. Or the late invitation to a dinner she was only possible truly welcome at.

“Like and do you have a hotel preference? I mean king size bed and extra pillows sure, but are you hungry? Do you want me to grab you some take-out? We can live it up and get room service. If you’re paying. Okay I am mostly kidding about that last part. Just call me back, please.” Cosima finishes.

**9:04 pm.**

“Delphine, please pick up the phone and tell me you’re okay. Or text me or something. I missed something big didn’t I? I mean I knew you were like upset but I thought it was about Shay or Sarah or Alison or something… I mean… why didn’t you tell me? Shit, I’m self-involved. I didn’t even think, “Cosima stops with a sob, “I just… you seem so strong you know? Like 89% of the time, I didn’t even think something could happen to you. I’m supposed to be the one in mortal peril…” She cannot even be bothered laugh at her on joke, instantly fixated on Delphine again. There’s something wrong. She feels it now.

“Delphine please just let me know that you’re okay.” Cosima’s voice breaks as she hangs up the phone again.


	20. Rückkehrunruhe (tumblweed)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Rückkehrunruhe** : The feeling of returning home after an immersive trip only to find it fading rapidly from your awareness.

When the wheels touch down, the whole cabin jostles. Three small bounces — each progressively shorter than the last — and brakes force the plane into an unsettling stop. Each passenger strains against their seatbelt with a sharp lurch forward.

“Welcome to San Francisco. Local time is 10:27pm. Please stay seated until we have arrived at the gate and the captain has turned off the fasten seatbelt sign. Thanks again for flying with us today. We hope you enjoyed your flight.”

Minutes later, _Ding_.

A chorus of clicks surrounds her and she joins in, unclasping the metal and stretching her legs as she stands, pulling a single black bag from the overhead compartment. The passengers ahead of her file out quietly, carrying luggage and sleeping children. Everyone’s groggy. It’s 1:30am in Toronto.

She passes through baggage claim alone, the weight of her carry on slung over her shoulder, and finds her way outside to hail a cab. It’s raining and the air is cold enough to see her breath, but she stands under the veranda and feels only the mist on her cheeks. A yellow car pulls over for her and she slides in. The address of her destination falls easily from her mouth, a familiar cadence practiced over a lifetime.

Her parents had offered to pick her up days ago, but she’d insisted they stay home.

 

_"I’m getting in too late. I’ll just catch a cab and let myself in."_

_"Are you sure, Sweet Pea? Dad and I don’t mind at all. The sooner we see you, the better," her mom says, a rare bit of urgency present in her usually casual tone._

_"No, no, it’s cool. I’m sure I’ll be exhausted anyway. I’ll just catch you in the morning."_

 

She rests her head on the window, a fog forming on the glass from the heat of her cheeks against the cool surface. The highway feels familiar, even through the rain and the thick white air outside. Take the 101 North into the city limits. Fifteen minutes to exit 433C and the apartment she grew up in is just a half mile west.

She’s made this trip a hundred times.

The city lights come into view, but stay out of focus, the pattern familiar even without a clearcut skyline. Above the length of the golden gate bridge, the night sky glows orange.

She unzips the front of her bag and pulls out her phone, holding down the power button until the screen lights up and starts to load. No messages.

The taxi driver stops at the corner.

“Here?” he asks.

“Yeah, this is fine.”

She pays him and steps outside where the rain is harsher and thicker than she thought it would be. Sans umbrella, she walks down the sidewalk, pulling her scarf over her hair, shielding her bag with her torso as her red coat takes the brunt of the storm. The precipitation soaks through the wool until the skin on her back is damp.

The key works easily in the front door, a large piece of glass framed in heavy wood. It slams shut and she starts up the familiar stairs, leaving a trail of mud and rainwater behind her. She removes her glasses with her free hand and blows at the magnifying water droplets until the glass is mostly clear.

Once inside, she hangs her coat to drip dry by the door and walks down the hallway to her bedroom. She turns on the light and finds the space mostly untouched since she last lived there, years ago during summer break in undergrad. Distantly familiar books are stacked on the nightstand and desk. Dated posters, a jumbled collections of cd’s. Immediately she feels twenty-two again, like entering a time capsule.

Like nothing has happened since she last stood here.

Like clones and Dyad were a dream and she’d been shaken awake, the most disturbing details lingering in wakeful confusion while the rest rapidly decayed into some ambiguous, distorted timeline.

She peels the wet clothing from her body, the fabric of her jeans tightening around her legs with the moisture, sticking so hard that she yanks them off with two hands, falling back onto her bed with a grunt. Once each article has been hung to dry, she steps in the shower to warm herself, to wash away the chill and the mucky film of rain, the dust and fibers from Toronto still stuck in her hair, behind her neck, under her nails. The lather of soap is thick and the water is turned up as high as it can go, leaving her skin pink and new.

On the top of one finger, a small scab from a mostly-healed cut rolls up, revealing a pink patch of newly cultivated skin. She sobs when she sees it, an unanticipated memory fighting its way in.

 

_“Ouch, dammit!”_

_“What? What happened?” Colin asks._

_“I — ” she starts, limply holding up her hand. She’d brushed it against the underside of the desk and sliced the skin above one knuckle on a metal edge. A single trail of blood oozes from the opening and down the side of her palm. She stares at it dumbly, her already sore and cloudy eyes pricking again at the sight._

_“There there, love,” Felix murmurs, wrapping a found paper towel around the stinging cut, using the pressure of his hand to stop the bleeding._

_“How did this happen, Felix?” she asks, cupping her free hand over her mouth, nostrils flaring. "How did I get here?"_

_Felix sighs, his chest visibly shrinking in exhale. "I don't know how to answer that." She pulls deeper into herself, shoulders pinching up towards her ears from the chilled air. Felix envelops her whole torso in his arms. Stiffly she stands and lets him rock her. "I'm so sorry," he says softly, his usual sassy demeanor melted into one of mirrored grief. Felix waves behind her back, shooing Colin away, and the attendant slips away into another room to offer them privacy._

_"I can't go in there," she says, her breath rasping into the shoulder of his black sweater._

_"Well you don't have to. But I think you might regret it if you don't."_

_His words swirl in the air around them. There are documents to be signed and plans to be made._

_Bodies to be identified._

_Well, not bodies._

_A body._

 

She peels the scab from her finger completely and rinses it onto the shower floor. It swirls around the drain twice before disappearing.

The ceramic tub cools her skin when she sinks her shins against it — a confusing sensation of hot and cold in close proximity. The soap is gone completely now, and every bit of her is scrubbed clean. But she can't bring herself to stand and dry and get into a bed she hasn't slept in since she was a different person. Since before she was a carbon copy with a target between her eyes. Before _enchantée_ and stolen wine and _Our relationship can be whatever we want_. Before coughing up crimson and _je t'aime_ and a solemn phone call from Art in the middle of the night.

Decay theory. She's read about it before — the notion that one's memories are irreparably altered and made unclear or unreliable over time.  
And she can feel it happening already.

She tries to remember her face, the shape of her mouth, the texture of her hair. Her smell. Once familiar features shift in her mind's eye; the placement of beauty marks and curl of eyelashes change into images she cannot separate from fiction. Her memories are water-logged and unreliable and peeling off of her as she grows new skin beneath.

On her fingers, she counts backwards the days. Four since the morgue. Five since dinner and their last conversation.

Five days like yesterday. Five days like a lifetime. Another dimension.

 

_"How long are ya stayin' out there, then?"_

_"I don't know. I just need to...get away from all this. Like, breathe for a second."_

_Sarah stares at her from across the couch and feels the intent behind her sister's words. They share more in common than their faces, and the Brit knows well their genetic urge to run when life feels too unbearable._

_Sarah clears her throat and rubs her fingers over the tension in her forehead. "Promise me you'll come back, Cos. We need you here. This isn't over yet."_

_"What if it is?" she asks, each breath stoking the crackling fire of disease in her chest, one she had resigned herself to dying from with no doctors left alive to treat her._

_Sarah's lip trembles and she disguises it with another clearing of her throat. "Just...don't disappear, yeah?"_

 

She wrings her hair out over the tub once the shower is off. The water once collected in her locks splats against the floor and trickles its way to the metal drain. She considers sleeping naked — just slipping between the sheets to avoid the added effort of finding clothing. But she slips on shorts and an old t shirt when she remembers that her parents are likely to check on her in the morning.

She turns off the lights and pulls back her old heavily patterned comforter. The sheets are fresh and cool on her skin, her warmed muscles instantly relaxing against the mattress.

Behind her, an ethereal warmth slips into the bed, the memory vivid enough to almost _feel_ a naked thigh pressing against the back of her own, a long form spooned around her. She closes her eyes tight, grasping to recall the words they'd spoken.

 

_"Are you ready to sleep, ma cherie?" She can hear the smile in the lilted voice behind her, can feel the press of feather-light lips across her shoulders. "Or have I failed to wear you out?" Gentle fingers trace up her thigh and over her hip bone, teasing at the sensitive skin below her naval._

_"Mmm," she hums, a warm smile forming on her lips. "Definitely worn out. Definitely sleepy."_

_"Bien."_

_The series of gentle kisses turns to a simple nuzzle, then Delphine's nose rests against the top notch in her spine._

_"I love you, Delphine," she says, her final declaration in a night filled with those sentiments in various volumes and languages. "Please remember that. No matter what happens."_

_"Of course," she hears, their hands finding one another, fingers intertwining. "I won't forget."_

 

She tries to hold it all — feelings and words and touches. She tries to preserve that moment, to lock it away for safekeeping. But it all feels shifty and tampered-with, like something that _could_ have happened, but lacks proper evidence.

It's all fading too quickly, floating from reliable memory faster than she can gather it. _Retroactive memory decay_ , she thinks, considering the evolutionary functions of such an event.

Maybe it is better to let it all drift away. Maybe forgetting will make all of this easier.

She pulls the covers tighter around her shoulders, wraps her arms even more snug around herself, cheek smushed into the pillow. The rain is still pounding at her window, cold and harsh, unlike any rain she's seen before in San Francisco.


	21. Onism + Monachopsis (kind-of-always-late)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Onism: The frustration of being stuck in just one body, that inhabits only one place at a time, and  
> Monachopsis: The subtle but persistent feeling of being out of place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is my apology for the angsty-ness that was Jouska. So, here: have some college camping fluff!

To be fair, she should probably have known. To be fair, she  _should_  have gleaned the nature of this particular course from its very title, and even more so from the description tucked neatly beneath (which she  _may_  or may not have skimmed over, at the time).

Still, she had been rather overwhelmed at that particular juncture of her life. As it turns out, there is something about transporting your life halfway across the world for an exchange year at an American university that can be mildly disorienting.  So disorienting, in fact, that little details like “course descriptions and requirements” might somehow escape you. As it turns out.  
  
It was in this way that Delphine found herself committed to a full semester in an outdoor education course. A predicament that would not have been a predicament, per se (she had nothing against  _studying_  the outdoors, after all), had it not been for the “field element” mentioned in the description that she had so hurriedly skimmed over.  
  
After all, her English at that point was not quite yet practiced. She couldn’t be expected to actually understand  _every_ word she read, could she? At least, not so very soon after arriving. It just didn’t seem  _fair_.

And yet, here she found herself. Glossing over those two tiny words had landed her in this place, baking under the scorching midday sun smack in the middle of a forest clearing, weighed down by an overfilled backpack and the heaviness of her own lassitude.  
  
To say that were other ways she would have preferred to spend her weekend would have been an understatement.

It did not help that most of the students enrolled in the course already seemed to have known each other; if it were not enough that Delphine already felt completely out of her element here, the  _company_  made matters even worse. Had she not already been so hindered by her own shakiness with the English language, the cliquishness of her classmates would have been enough to deter her from the formation of friendships in and of itself.

And now, only a month into the course, and already they were expected to embark on one of these  _excursions_ together. Only a month in, and already Delphine was expected to have developed some level of  _connection_  with these people. With these people who were already so seemingly interconnected: bonded by an interest, a language, and an apparent past that Delphine did not share.

Truthfully, Delphine was not certain that she would be able to handle these requisite monthly forays into nature. Not with this crowd, and not in this country.  
  
And yet…

She lifted the brim of her baseball cap – borrowed last-minute from her roommate – and wiped the sweat from her forehead. It was so silly and so American, with its ridiculous emblem of socks that were red. Such a ludicrous name for any sort of sporting team, really.  _The Red Sox_. She wondered absently what had ever possessed her to come to this country, if it meant trudging about miles from civilization with complete strangers while wearing ridiculous hats with even more ridiculous logos.

She continued on the trail – always a few paces behind the majority of the group – and wondered when they might finally stop. Wondered if, perhaps, she should have been more focused on learning the Imperial system while in school.  _Just over eight miles in_ , the professor had said. But whether that was two kilometers or twenty, Delphine hadn’t the faintest notion. Too embarrassed to ask any of her classmates, she simply traipsed on.  
  
Finally, the group reached a clearing next to a river. And finally,  _finally_ , everyone stopped.

“Okay, chickens, we’ll set up camp here,” Mrs. S announced. The professor took a moment to survey the group before continuing. “Now, since it’s only our first excursion, I’ll be glad to answer any of your questions. Can’t have any of you dying on the first go now, can we.”   
  
“Nope, not like last time. S loses one nearly every year, you know,” Cal teased. The TA smiled broadly, his rough face belying his friendly, playful demeanor.

Mrs. S chuckled. Her kind eyes peeked out from beneath a straw hat, and surprisingly Delphine found that her weathered face lent itself equally well to a warm grin as it did to her usual stern expression. Mrs. S had been teaching this course for longer than anyone seemed able to remember. She was wildly popular with the students, but something about her demeanor pricked Delphine with discomfort. She found herself not wanting to disappoint her, but constantly feeling as if she already had.

“Now, pair up with your assigned partners and set up your tents. If any of you have trouble you’re welcome to ask Cal or myself, but I do hope that at this point you can all at least do this much. Otherwise, well,” she paused to glance playfully at Cal, “This might just be the year we lose one.”

She’d said it lightheartedly – hands on her hips and a smile spread wide on her face – but Delphine couldn’t help the anxiety that sprung up in her. What if she had to ask for help already? What if she set it up wrong, and it collapsed in the middle of the night? What if her partner wouldn’t help her, or if she snored too much? What if –

“Hey, Delphine.”  
  
Her anxious whirlwind was abruptly stilled by a friendly voice and a flashing smile.

“ _Bonjour_ , Cosima,” she smiled shyly back. While Delphine felt greasy and exhausted, Cosima radiated enthusiasm. She seemed in her element here – all glowing, tanned skin and sunshine grin.

“Sooo, where do you wanna set up? I’m thinking we grab that spot over behind those trees.” She pointed to a space just up from the water, slightly secluded and a bit away from the rest of the group.  
  
“Oh, ehm…  _oui_. That’s fine, yes,” Delphine stammered. “Whatever you think is best.”  
  
“Hey, trust me on this one,” Cosima assured her. She moved closer and lowered her voice to a whisper. “It’s better to be kinda away from everybody. Helena snores. Shay will probably, like, do some chanting or sage burning ritual or something. I don’t know. She mentioned something about, like, ‘calling upon the spirits of the earth’ earlier. Oh, and I can guarantee you that Beth and Paul are gonna end up in the same tent by the end of the night… so we probably won’t wanna be in earshot for that. C’mon,” she prompted, nudging Delphine’s side and bouncing off towards the trees.  
  
Delphine sighed wearily – she envied Cosima’s easy energy.

Still, she supposed she could have done worse for a partner. She could have been forced to share a tent with the wildly eccentric Helena, for instance. Or somehow worse still: Shay, who reeked too strongly of patchouli and an over-dedication to her own Bohemian image. Even the thought of sleeping next to Sarah – with her gruff demeanor and reckless nature – appealed little to Delphine.  
  
Yes, she could do worse than Cosima. Cosima, she supposed, was the best of the lot of them. Even if she used far too much slang, and even if the scent of marijuana seemed inexorably sunk into her person. Even if her attention sometimes seemed to cause Delphine to smile a bit too fully, to laugh a bit too long. In any other situation, she might have mistaken these feelings for the beginnings of a crush.  
  
_Non_ , she shook her head to herself.  _Non, she is just nice to me. That is all._

She was, after all, quite lonely. No one had warned her of the  _loneliness_ , when she had elected to move so far away. She supposed she should have anticipated it, really, but it had caught her quite off guard in its intensity. So it made sense, then. With very few friends to her name at this point, it made  _sense_  that Cosima’s attention towards her – with her buoyant demeanor and easy affability – might excite her more than usual. It made perfect, logical sense.  
  
Still, Delphine did not stop herself from lingering her gaze a bit long when Cosima’s lithe, thinly muscled form set to work erecting their tent. Did not stop herself from admiring the flex of her arms, the shine on her skin. Beauty was beauty, after all. It didn’t have to mean anything.

“Are you sure you do not want me to help?” Delphine asked from where she sat seated primly on a nearby rock.  
  
“Nah, it’s cool. You can do it next time,” Cosima answered, snapping the poles in. “I know you’re not, like, super into this class.”  
  
“And what makes you think that I will stay around long enough for there to be a ‘next time’” Delphine teased.  
  
“Well, you haven’t dropped out yet,” Cosima smiled wryly back, lifting her gaze to meet Delphine’s. She felt her cheeks flush.  
  
“I tried to, actually. They would not let me. Apparently I missed the deadline to, ehm… remove the class?”  
  
“Drop the class,” Cosima offered.  
  
“ _Oui_ , yes. To drop the class without a penalty,” she finished. “So it seems that I am, how would you say…  _committed_  to this course.”  
  
“Hm, well then in that case, Ms. Cormier, I guess I’d better show you how to set up this tent after all,” Cosima decided, her face plastered with the now-familiar radiant smile. “Now that you’re  _committed_. Wanna grab those stakes over there?”  
  
Delphine obliged with a grin, wondering if perhaps she might be able to muster a spark of excitement for this course after all.

_______________________  


She noticed it later, during a short lesson from Cal on foraging and edible plants. It was nearly dusk, and Delphine was growing bored with Cal’s lengthy segment on mushrooms, so she began to let her eyes wander around the group. At this point, Alison and Angie seemed to be the only ones still paying him any mind. Art was reclined back a bit in his seat, gaze lifted lazily to the sky. Helena’s focus seemed to alternate from the bar of chocolate in her hands to a squirrel scurrying about around a nearby boulder. Beth and Paul were wrapped around one another, as usual, and even Felix seemed to be leaning in a bit close to Colin. Shay seemed to be – meditating, maybe? And Sarah Manning was giggling.  
  
Delphine’s brow furrowed.

Sarah Manning never  _giggled_.

It was then that Delphine caught a flash of silver passing from Sarah’s hand to Felix’s. He tucked the object into his coat before it snagged anyone else’s attention, but not before Delphine could suss out its identity.

_A flask._

Delphine flushed, a tight anxiety balling up in her chest. Delphine Cormier did not break rules, and even being in such close proximity to this  _particular_  sort of rule breaking made her go rigid with unease. After all, the international student info packets had made it  _explicitly_  clear that underage drinking was taken exceptionally seriously at this institution, with  _expulsion_  threatened as the immediate consequence. Delphine couldn’t understand why anyone would take such a risk. Her eyes found their way to Cosima’s, who smirked knowingly. Strangely, it calmed her, and she found herself smiling shyly back.

________________________

The rest of the night drifted by in a surprisingly uneventful manner: lectures were completed, dinner was consumed, and exhausted students disappeared behind flimsy tent walls. It seemed that perhaps there would be no shenanigans after all, despite what Delphine’s discovery of contraband alcohol had led her to suspect. Lulled into a sense of complacency and weighed down by exhaustion, Delphine drifted off to sleep easily (even despite the discomfort of her sleeping pad on the uneven ground, even despite Cosima’s warmth radiating innocently against her back, even despite their proximity initially quickening the beating of her heart).  
  
And so Delphine found herself rather alarmed when she woke up to find herself next to a vacant sleeping bag.  
  
For a moment, she panicked. What had happened? Had she done something embarrassing in the night? Had she made Cosima uncomfortable in some way?    
  
Before the gusts of her anxiety could whirl themselves into too powerful a storm, Delphine found herself suddenly blinded by the bright glare of a headlamp.

“Hey, Delphine.” She heard a whisper, followed by the sound of her tent being unzipped.  
  
“ _Quoi_?” she responded groggily, still mildly disoriented from sleep. “Oh, Cosima.”  
  
“Shit, sorry. You were asleep. Shit.”  
  
“ _Non, je_ … eh, I… well, yes. I was. What time is it? Where did you go?”  
  
“No idea what time it is. Buuuut…. I  _did_  manage to snag Sarah’s flask. And, um, full disclosure? I might have brought some stuff of my own. Wanna go check out the river?”  
  
Delphine hesitated, mouth agape and already half-formed into the word “ _non_.” And she  _should_  have said  _non_. Should have rolled over and ignored Cosima. Should have let her go off on her antics alone. Let her fail this course by herself. Let her risk expulsion. Delphine would not risk being expelled from this university – from this country – for something as silly as underage drinking, especially when she was of age in her own country. It was simply too ludicrous.  
  
But Cosima’s smile flashed bright and easy. The whites of her eyes gleamed, and her pupils seemed to actually  _sparkle_ in the darkness.  
  
Delphine did not remember actually  _saying_  yes – could not remember uttering any sort of verbal agreement to this adventure, to this transgression. Yet, she found herself grasping Cosima’s proffered hand and mirroring her offered smile. She found herself still clasping that hand, their fingers entwined, as she followed Cosima down to the bank of the river, smile split wide and permanent across her face.

Cosima was arguably just as reckless as Sarah, but while Sarah’s wrongdoings twisted Delphine’s stomach into an anxious knot, somehow Cosima’s impish smile inspired her. With Cosima, breaking the rules was exciting. With Cosima, she felt safe.  
  
“Where is, ehm… where are the others?” Delphine asked as they came to the river. Cosima shrugged and produced a large lantern and blanket from her backpack.  
  
“Asleep, I guess.” She turned on the lantern and laid the blanket over damp ground. “Why? Wanna invite them?”  
  
Delphine smirked.  
  
“Not particularly.”  
  
“Correct answer!” Cosima teased as she pulled off her headlamp and stuffed it into her bag. “I mean, they’re all great. But they can sorta be a bit… much, sometimes.”  
  
“ _Oui, c’est vrai_ ,” Delphine agreed as Cosima plopped down on the blanket beside her, Sarah’s flask in hand.

The night was warm, but they settled in close to one another anyhow. Cosima kicked off her shoes and dug her toes into the wet dirt. She unscrewed the flask, took a swig, and crinkled her nose in disgust.

“Ugh, bourbon. Of fucking course,” she spluttered, coughing. “Want some?” she choked out, offering the flask to Delphine. “It’s almost gone, anyway. I guess Sarah and Felix killed most of it earlier.”  
  
Delphine hesitated a moment, but Cosima raised her eyebrows in a silent challenge. Delphine Cormier did not break rules, but…  
  
Delphine Cormier never backed down from a challenge.  
  
She boldly seized the flask from Cosima’s hand, lifting it to her lips and taking a long, smooth pull. She could feel Cosima’s gaze traveling from her lips down her jawline and along her collarbone.  
  
“Woah. Well, okay then,” Cosima said, impressed.

“It is not very good,” Delphine stated primly, offering the flask back to Cosima.  
  
“No shit. Sarah brought it.”  
  
“Well then why did you take it? If you knew that it would be ‘shit’?”  
  
Delphine felt her cheeks go all warm and tingly; possibly from the whisky, possibly from the way Cosima chuckled at her. The warmth spread lower and washed all over her chest, and she couldn’t suppress her smile (couldn’t decide if she really  _should_ , with Cosima beaming back at her in that particular way).

“I’m doing her a favor,” Cosima assured her. “Honestly? Sarah’s kind of an idiot. If you’re gonna bring illegal alcohol on a college camping trip, you don’t put it in a fucking flask. That’s just, like, asking to get caught.”  
  
“Hm,” Delphine said. “And are you not afraid that she will find out? That she will catch you?”  
  
Cosima chuckled at that.  
  
“Nah, no way. She’s off banging the TA right now.”  
  
“ _Cal_?” Delphine asked, incredulous.  
  
“Mm-hmm,” Cosima confirmed, as if this were the most mundane fact in the world. She drained what little was left of the bourbon from the flask. “And I’ll put her flask back before she can figure out who took it. Empty, of course,” she proclaimed gleefully, tossing the now empty container into her bag. “Now, if Sarah were  _smart_ , she would have put her whisky in something a little less conspicuous,” Cosima said, holding up her metal thermos with a mischievous glint in her eye.  
  
“Cosima!” Delphine mockingly reprimanded her.  
  
“Does that mean you don’t want any?” Cosima teased. “I promise it’s better than the bourbon.”

“I should hope so,” Delphine bantered back, feeling bold. She grabbed the thermos from Cosima’s hands and unscrewed the cap before taking a sniff. “What did you bring?”

“Try some,” Cosima suggested playfully.  
  
Delphine glanced at her skeptically, but Cosima smiled.  
  
“What? Don’t trust me?” Her eyes seemed to catch a glimmer from the lantern - her entire face glowed.  
  
Delphine tipped the thermos back and took a small sip.

“Is this… wine?” Delphine asked, somewhat shocked.

“Mmm-hmm,” Cosima answered. “And it’s like, pretty decent shit, too. I don’t like to bring hard stuff on these trips. I prefer to, like, remember my nights out here.”  
  
“Hmmm,” Delphine answered thoughtfully, taking another sip.  
  
“Sorry I don’t have, like, fancy wine glasses or whatever. Options are kind of limited here.”  
  
Delphine smiled warmly, simply offering the thermos back in response. Cosima took a sip.  
  
“So,  _Delphine Cormier_ ,” she began, affecting a terrible French accent, “What inspired you to move all the way across the world for a semester at Berkeley?”  
  
“A year, actually,” Delphine corrected. “I am here for a year.”

“Shit, big commitment,” Cosima teased. “So, like… why, though? Why here?”  
  
“Well,” Delphine began with a smirk, “I heard that there was this  _magnificent_  outdoor education course, and I just knew that I had to –”  
  
“Okay, okay! I get it,” Cosima laughed. “You’re not a big fan of this course. And you don’t want to tell me why you moved here. It’s cool.” She paused. “Bad breakup?“

“No, not at all! Although… well, yes. There was a breakup,” she admitted, almost as an afterthought. “But that was not the reason.”  
  
“Okay,” Cosima said, taking another sip of the wine and offering it back to Delphine. Delphine accepted it.

“You are going to laugh at me,” she stated simply, and took a long sip of wine.  
  
“I make no promises,” Cosima joked, but the warmth of her perpetual smile put Delphine at ease.  
  
“My town in France,” she began, “It was very small. And even after my family moved to Paris – it was larger, yes, but still. I always felt that I, ehm… I did not feel that I… conformed?”

“Like, you didn’t fit in?” Cosima offered. “You felt out of place?”  
  
“ _Oui_!” she exclaimed. “Yes, I did not feel that I belonged there. So I thought, why not? Why not travel somewhere new? To see if, ehm…”  
  
“To see if you fit,” Cosima finished for her, and their eyes met in a way that burned Delphine’s cheeks and stirred a pleasant fluttering beneath her skin.  
  
“Oui,” she replied, barely above a whisper. She sunk her teeth into her lower lip – let it go, smoothed over it with her tongue. Still, she did not remove her gaze from Cosima’s.  
  
“And do you?” Cosima asked, eyes still locked with Delphine’s. “Feel like you… fit here?”  
  
_Oui_ , Delphine thought immediately.  _In this moment, yes_.  
  
“I… am not sure yet,” she said instead, slowly. She paused, not feeling that she could express herself properly in English. She shook her head in frustration and finally dropped her gaze to the side and away from Cosima.  
  
“I’m sorry.  I told you,” she said, “It’s a stupid reason.”  
  
“No it’s not,” Cosima assured her, her tone nonchalant. “It’s not stupid to feel out of place. I mean, everybody feels that way sometimes. It’s not weird.”  
  
“Even if I always feel this way?” Delphine laughed, but she felt that familiar discomfort bleeding into the edges of it.  
  
“Do you feel that way now?”  
  
Delphine’s breath caught in her throat.  
  
“I – no. I don’t. Which is ridiculous,” she laughed. “This is the last place I would have thought to, ehm… feel like I  _fit_.”  
  
“I’m glad,” Cosima said simply, and took a sip of the wine before handing it to Delphine. She laid back on the blanket, hands behind her head. Delphine looked down at her from where she sat and saw stars reflected in her eyes.

“Yeah. I mean, we all experience the world differently. Like, I totally get it. Well, I mean, I don’t feel the same. But I do… except, it’s different… ugh, man,” she paused, adorably crinkling her brow in frustration. “Tony and I had, like, a lot of weed earlier. Sorry if I’m not making much sense.”  
  
“Weed,” Delphine pondered the word. “You are, ehm…  _défoncée?_ ”  
  
Cosima quirked an eyebrow at her.  
_  
“Merde, je ne sais pas comment le dire en anglais…_ ”  
  
“Dude, I have no clue what you’re saying right now. German speaker here.”  
  
“You have, ehm… been smoking? But not cigarettes.”  
  
“Delphine Cormier, are you trying to ask me if I’m high?”  
  
“High!  _Oui_!” she exclaimed. “Weed is marijuana?”  
  
“Oh my god, Delphine,” Cosima laughed. “What am I going to do with you?”  
  
“You do use a lot of slang,” Delphine pointed out. “And I am still learning.”  
  
Cosima shrugged. “You seem to be doing pretty damn well to me.”  
  
She laughed again, and Delphine admired her laugh. It was an honest thing, a thing devoid of any vestiges of sadness. She envied it.  
  
“But you were saying?” Delphine prompted her, lying down beside her on the blanket. She propped herself up on one elbow, body angled towards Cosima.  
  
“Oh, right,” she continued, her laughter subsiding to reveal a more pensive tone. “I guess I don’t really feel out of place so much as I… want to be everywhere? If that makes sense? Like, one body isn’t enough. I sort of feel like I’m everyone? Or like I want to be?”  
  
“I… guess that makes sense,” Delphine said. It seemed so far from anything she’d ever felt.

“I mean, having only one body. That’s crazy, right?” Cosima went on, the speed of her words increasing along with her enthusiasm. Delphine watched her, and still she stared up at the stars. “Like, just think of all of the different possible places you could be at any given moment. Any of the people you could meet. Like, why just this body? What would it feel like if I were in your body instead? Or if you were in mine?”  
  
Delphine flushed from her cheeks down to her chest again, only this time the warmth traveled all through to her fingertips and toes and settled in at the apex of her thighs. She took another sip of wine.  
  
“I, ehm… am not sure. I suppose I hadn’t… had not given it any thought.”  
  
If Cosima noticed the effect that her words had on Delphine, she gave no hint of it. She seemed oblivious – too caught up in the wildly focused trajectory of her musings.  
  
“Like, you must experience the world so differently than me. Or even Felix! Or Shay. Like, imagine thinking that it’s a great idea to spread honey all over yourself and walk around chanting in the forest.”  
  
“ _Quoi_? She is not!” Delphine laughed, envisioning it.

“Oohhhh yeah. Seriously, though. She’s gonna get herself attacked by a bear or something. God, I can’t believe I used to date her,” Cosima groaned, grabbing the wine back from Delphine and propping herself up to take a long swig.  
  
“You did?” Delphine asked, feeling even warmer. She felt a peculiar surge of jealousy rise up in her. Perhaps it was only the whisky and the wine, but she found that she was less and less certain of the assumed platonic nature of her feelings for Cosima.  
  
“Yeah, I know. Please don’t judge me? It was freshman year, and let’s be real: not a lot of cute girls to choose from.”  
  
“I do not find her that attractive,” Delphine balked.  
  
“That’s what I’m saying, though!” Cosima enthused, all passion and dancing hands again. “Like, we all perceive everything so differently. We all interact with each other, with our environment, with all of these external stimuli so differently. Don’t you even just get, like, so  _frustrated_  only being in one body, in one place, at one time? There are just so many places to see, and you can never see all of them. And even if, like  _somehow_ , you could, that place is gonna be different at any given moment. And in the same moment, it’s gonna be different for you than it is for someone else. You’re never gonna perceive something the same way as the person next to you. It’s crazy. There are so many variables. It’s just, so wild, ya know?”  
  
Delphine was in awe. Cosima’s experience was so, so different from her own perpetual feeling of – what had Cosima said? – of not fitting in. She couldn’t fathom it.  
  
“But don’t you think that maybe, in a way… we are all connected?” Delphine began slowly. “That it is enough to have these experiences as a collective, if not as an individual? That maybe in some manner you  _do_  experience all of the things happening in the universe, or that will happen, or that have happened in the past? I guess…” Delphine grew quiet, uncertain if she was sharing too much. “I guess… I have always hoped that. Have always hoped to feel it.”

Cosima gave her a small, encouraging smile.  
  
“Why, Ms. Cormier,” she quipped softly, “I would not have expected you to be so taken with such a bohemian line of thinking. Aren’t you in the hard sciences?”  
  
“Aren’t you?” Delphine shot back playfully.  
  
“Touché,” Cosima conceded. “Maybe I should set  _you_ up with Shay. You two can talk all about the ‘interconnectedness of the vibrations of the universe’ or whatever.”  
  
“I… do not think that I am interested in Shay,” Delphine specified, staring pointedly at Cosima. She bit down on her lip again, and found herself staring at the curve of Cosima’s mouth. The thermos of wine lay capped and forgotten beside them.  
  
“Fair enough, and honestly probably a good choice,” she agreed, lying back on the blanket again to gaze up at the stars. “Have your eye on anyone else, then?”  
  
“I… am not sure yet,” Delphine mused.  
  
“You seem to not be sure about a lot of things tonight,” she laughed, eyes sparkling and tongue poking playfully through her teeth.  
  
And it was then that Delphine kissed her.

She remembered most clearly, afterwards, the rush of the sharp little breath Cosima took in when Delphine so abruptly leaned in and cut off her laughter. She remembered the slight stiffening of her body, that tension that quickly melted into a quiet enthusiasm. She remembered the stars in her eyes just before she kissed her, the glow of the lantern on her skin. She remembered licking the taste of wine from her lips. She remembered her  _softness_ , mostly, and the quiet sound of the water lapping on the shore.  
  
Delphine rolled easily on top of her, and Cosima’s arms snaked up her sides. Delphine pulled back a bit, propping herself up just inches above Cosima.  
  
“Is this… okay?” she asked.  
  
“Um, yeah,” Cosima answered with a wide glowing grin. “More than okay here.”  
  
“ _Bon_ ,” Delphine answered breathily, and dipped down to meet Cosima’s lips again.

Perhaps it was unwise, she thought, to kiss the only friend she’d managed to make in this country. Perhaps she should not have risked this. But as Cosima’s hands ducked beneath her shirt and traveled up the expanse of her back, she could not help but simply be happy for this moment. For this moment in a place she’d never supposed to want to be, in class she’d never wanted to sign up for, and with a woman she would never have thought to want. It was all too wildly unlikely.

 _But strangely_ , she thought as the grinned into Cosima’s kiss,  _it fit_.

“Do you still… wish that you could be elsewhere?” Delphine teased, nipping at Cosima’s lower lip. “That you could be in another body?”   
  
“Mmmmmm, nope,” Cosima hummed, bringing a hand up to graze her fingertips along Delphine’s cheek. “Pretty happy with where this one’s at right now, thanks.”  
  
Delphine grinned even wider.  
  
“You still feeling out of place?” Cosima countered.  
  
“ _Non_ ,” she husked. “ _Je pense_  – I think I am happy here.”  
  
“ _Bon_ ,” Cosima whispered, brushing their noses together before playfully ducking away from Delphine’s mouth to kiss along her neck instead.

Delphine stretched back and allowed the warmth to wash all over her. Strange, that this rush of contentment she’d always sought could arise as a result of one tiny human in such a short amount of time. Perhaps it was not, after all, a _place_ that she was looking to fit in.

And perhaps it was stupid (perhaps it was the stars, or the forest, or the loneliness, or the wine) but Delphine couldn’t help but think that – maybe, just maybe – she would go anywhere with Cosima. That she would want to experience her through being a thousand different people – what would she see? Would she still feel the same way about her? Would she still charm her, regardless? Would it matter what body either of them inhabited? She found herself suddenly wanting to know; found herself suddenly inspired by discovery instead of the more familiar urge to escape.  
  
But at this particular moment, she thought – there is no place she would rather be. This accidental course that she never should have enrolled in, and this accidental camping trip she never wanted.  And Cosima – well, she never would have suspected to want her, either.

“So… ehm, these… tent partners,” she began, nuzzling into the crook of Cosima’s neck. “Do they remain the same for all of these trips? They do not change?”  
  
“Hmmmm… not sure,” Cosima responded, weaving her fingers lazily into Delphine’s hair. “But I’ll see if I can have Sarah put in a good word with Cal.”  
  
“Good,” Delphine whispered, and smiled against Cosima’s chest. She knew they would need to head back to the tent eventually – to return Sarah’s flask; to hide any evidence of the wine; to sleep, maybe – but for the moment she would allow herself to simply enjoy the warmth of her body wrapped around Cosima’s, the soft lapping of the water on the shore, the soft glow of the lantern and the tiny pinprick stars above.

As it turns out, there is something about transporting your life halfway across the world for an exchange year at an American university that can indeed be mildly disorienting.  So disorienting, in fact, that little details like “course descriptions and requirements” might somehow escape you. Might somehow escape you and lead you into commitments and into a happiness that you never could have foreseen. That you might suddenly find yourself committed to a university, to a woman, to a country for much longer than you ever could have anticipated. That you might find, against all odds, that you fit.  
  
As it turns out.


End file.
